With the recent discussion of shop light and window direction, I thought it would be interesting to post a short excerpt from A.J. Roubo on shop light. While I don’t recall Roubo discussing the direction the windows should face, he does detail how to bring diffuse light into the interior.
Ever since translating this section 10 years ago, I’ve wanted to make some muslin diffuser panels to try them out.
— Christopher Schwarz
“The front counter of the shop should be of a height equal to that of the benches so that in the case of works of an extraordinary length you can pass the wood over them while working and rest them there.
“There should be as many entrances as necessary for the width of the building, which should be closed with doors that should open the complete height to facilitate the entry of the wood. They should be covered with light muslin fabric so that when in use you can enjoy daylight in the interior of the shop.
“The upper part of the counter should also be closed up with frames covered in fabric, which are pulled open during the day and are held to the floor by wooden crossbars [hardware fittings] which hold them there.
“At the top of the front of the shop should be placed a porch roof of about 18 thumbs or 2 feet overhang, which serves to prevent water from entering and ruining your work and tools.”
— from the forthcoming “To Make as Perfectly as Possible: Roubo on Furniture”
O teak!
You delight of clients’ wives,
refuge of architects,
and the dot over the “i” of honoraria.
You fiendishly indestructible and shitty brown.
You are so Asiatic Company-like and so noble
that you cannot even stand being painted in a vibrant color,
so full of virtues that you can only be shown nude
as God, in a moment of genius, created you,
sexless, boring, as costly as virtue itself.
Neither a knot nor a crack on you can make little girls and boys
think that not everything is the same at both ends.
Together with stainless steel and reinforced concrete
you stand as the trinity of the times.
Banks, corporations, and savings and loans worship you.
You are the symbol of all manner of consolidated semi-education,
the discrete advertisement for the suitable height of our tax bracket
and the corresponding excellence of our neighborhood.
Once you were an honorable maritime material,
intended to withstand storm and salt water.
Now you have been raised to the pedestal of taste.
Now even bank customers,
who themselves must pay the price,
fall on their knees before the totem pole of teak.
*
Humble and touching pine,
which can rot in decent fashion,
which must not show its dirty hue at any price,
which modestly wears the painter’s color –
Let us be old fashioned together and out of touch with the times.
Our chance will come again, sooner or later.
— Poul Henningsen (1894-1967), Danish author, architect and critic, written Oct. 28, 1953
“New, new, new, just for the sake of newness, for the sake of the sales’ curve, in order to make people throw away the old things before they have served their time. Not so long ago we looked for a better form, now we only have to find a new one.”
— Poul Henningsen (1894-1967), Danish author, architect and critic
For those woodworkers who prefer full-size plans, we now offer plans for the two chairs featured in Peter Galbert’s book “Chairmaker’s Notebook.”
The plans are $25. If you order them before July 5, 2015, you will receive free domestic shipping. You can place your order here. The first batch of plans will ship out to customers about June 15.
The plans feature handmade full-size drawings of the following components of the fan-back and balloon-back chairs:
Full-size turning patterns of legs, stretchers and posts – both bobbin and baluster forms.
Full-size drawings of the seat shapes that feature all mortise locations, sightlines and resultant angles.
The fan-back crest shape and the bending form required to make it.
The profiles of on the back of the balloon-back chair and the bending form required to make it.
All the drawings are fully dimensioned with easy-to-read call-outs. The plans for both chairs come printed on a single 36” x 48” sheet on white, #20 paper typically used for engineering prints. The plans are folded to a 9” x 12” size and ship in a rigid cardboard mailer.
Like all Lost Art Press products, these plans are produced and printed entirely in the United States of America.
One caveat: While these plans provide the shapes of all the components, you will need “Chairmaker’s Notebook” to build the chairs exactly as Pete describes. These plans are a supplement to – not a substitution for – the book.
— Christopher Schwarz
P.S. We will be offering these plans to our retailers, but we do not know at this time which, if any, will carry the plans.
For the last two years, Lucy and I have been looking for the right urban storefront for the next stage of our lives, which will begin as soon as our daughter Katy, 14, goes to college.
We’ve looked at dozens of properties in person (hundreds online) and have come close to making an offer on two. I plan to die in the building that we buy – at the bench if I’m lucky – so I’m picky about every detail – light, the architectural core and the neighborhood for starters.
Whenever I teach a class or speak to a club, I get asked several questions: Are you opening a woodworking school? A retail store? A place to film online videos?
The answer is: None of the above.
Lost Art Press, our business, will not change. We are dedicated to making printed books (and the rare DVD) about hand-tool woodworking. We don’t want to start a school or a subscription-based website. Why? We’re passionate about books. Full stop. It’s how we learn woodworking, and we think it is still the best way to transfer the knowledge forward through time.
But this building will fertilize two parts of our business that have been dormant during our first eight years. They involve you, so that’s why I feel compelled to write about them today.
A Mechanical Library. Our research begins in the library and ends at the workbench. As such, we have accumulated many hundreds of books on woodworking, many of which have not been digitized. With this new building, we plan to dedicate significant space to our library, which grows every week. It will be a membership library, but the membership won’t cost money. It will be something even more dear. Consider reading about the famous Cincinnati Time Store for details.
A Woodworking Laboratory. During the last few years I have taken to collaborating with other woodworkers of all skill levels to work out sticky joinery and design problems. Putting four or six minds to work on a question produces amazing results, and it almost eliminates the idiosyncratic nature of some woodworking teaching. Running an active lab isn’t an effort to make the craft more vanilla or textbook-like. Instead, it is a way of quickly getting past the blind spots of individual researchers and woodworkers. Since I started working collaboratively with other woodworkers, I have found the extra brains lend great clarity to my work.
Today Katy and I looked at a 19th-century property that originally was the Rust Cornice Works, a storefront and factory for making sheet-metal architectural details. The location was perfect. There was plenty of space (more than 10,000 square feet). But the windows faced west. And I’d need to dump at least $150,000 into the building to make it a place to live and work. We have seen better.
The other property on our short list this week looks promising, and it includes a liquor license (no, we’re not opening a bar).
