So where is Peter Galbert’s book “Chairmaker’s Notebook” that was supposed to ship from the printer on March 20? The book is supposed to leave the Tennessee printer today and arrive in our warehouse either tomorrow or Friday.
Then our fulfillment service is creating a special assembly line to process all of the orders (more than 1,100) immediately.
In other news about the book, we are preparing to publish a set of full-size plans for the two chairs in the book. These plans were hand-drawn by Peter and include the full-size seats with all the angles, all the turning profiles (both baluster and bobbin), plus the details on the bending form for the fan-back.
I’m currently scanning the plans and will have details on price and availability soon. These plans will not be bundled with the book and will be actually be produced and shipped by a third party. So no one is going to miss out on a deal or discount.
I’m driving up to our warehouse on Friday and should have photos of the finished product soon.
I’d like to say “thank you” to all the woodworkers who have donated tools, money and offers of assistance for the Hand Tool Immersion class for new woodworkers being held at the Marc Adams School of Woodworking this fall.
The class filled up in 45 minutes. Marc encouraged me to hold a second one, but I’m afraid I am too tied up with <insert insane list of items here> to even consider it. The good news is that we are already planning additional deeply discount classes for new woodworkers for 2016. Details to come when they are available.
As to the tools y’all have sent, we now have an official imperial crapload of them in my sunroom. In fact, I think we’ll have all 18 students covered. We just have to first figure out exactly what each student needs to complete his or her toolkit.
By the way, if you are a student in this class, you should receive instructions in May on getting your toolkit sorted. So stay tuned on that front.
As to offers of food, teaching assistance and cheerleading, I want to say “yes” to all of the generous offers. I just need to talk over what is possible with Marc next month while I’m at the school. It’s his school, his facility and his insurance. So it’s really his call as to whether you can bring your flea circus to help flatten chisel backs.
The other update for this class (and the similar one in England) is that I’ve started building the tool chest we’ll all be building during these classes. I’ll be shooting photos and will have a manual for the students with drawings etc. This manual will allow me to take naps during the class, perhaps even to skip a couple days of the class to hit the Oaken Barrel for a bender. Who knows?
The wood for the chest is some sweet 4/4 white pine I recently scored. The stuff almost planes itself.
Ants Viires, the pioneering Estonian ethnographer and author of “Woodworking in Estonia,” died on March 18, according to friends and family.
At the time of his death, Lost Art Press was actively preparing an all-new translation of the landmark “Woodworking in Estonia,” which Roy Underhill listed in 2011 as one of his three favorite woodworking books. The surviving family fully supports our translation effort, and we expect to release the book by the end of 2015.
“Woodworking in Estonia” is one of the most detailed studies ever written about an active hand-tool culture. It really is like stepping back into the 17th or 18th century. Viires dedicated his life to recording this vanishing Baltic culture and recording their tools, processes and products.=
Oddly, “Woodworking in Estonia” was first translated into English in the 1960s by the Israel Program for Scientific Translations and – even odder – was published by the U.S. Science Foundation as a typewritten text with low-quality images.
Viires disavowed this edition, saying it was unauthorized.
Nevertheless, this weird little book is how most of us encountered “Woodworking in Estonia” and became fans of it. About two years ago, we encountered an Estonian woodworking in Toronto who put us in touch with the Viires family and we all agreed to embark on a completely new translation.
Since that first 1960s edition, Viires had updated the text in “Woodworking in Estonia.” And the Estonian publisher, Kirjastus Ilo, reissued the book with gorgeous and crisp drawings and photos.
We hired a translator who was familiar with Viires’s work to handle the new edition, and he turned in his final translation about the same day that Viires died. The book is now in the hands of Peter Follansbee, who will comb through the text to ensure it is technically correct. And then we will design it to look very much like Viires’s 2006 edition of the book, with all the sharp drawings and photos – and with the full support of the Viires family and the Estonian publisher.
In other words, this will be the first authorized English translation of this book, its sales will support the Viires family and English-speaking woodworkers will finally be able to fully experience this amazing woodworking book.
Not everything should be as smooth as a nun’s stomach. While every surface of my work is finished with handplanes, that doesn’t mean it was a smoothing plane.
Cabinet backs and the undersides of everything are best finished with a jack plane, either across, diagonally or parallel to the grain. Not only does this speed you along and allow you to save your effort for the show surfaces, it is pleasant to touch.
The shallow scallops – even the woolly ones that plow across the grain – actually feel like something worth touching. Even a little bark down below is OK with me. On the interiors of cabinets and drawers that will get touched frequently, I finish with a jointer plane. This leaves wider and shallower scallops that almost anyone can feel if they look for them.
On the show surfaces, the even-shallower scallops left by my smoothing plane are almost imperceptible unless you catch the top in the right light or pass your hand lightly across the surface with the intent of finding them. They are mostly invisible to the touch, but they are there.
I’m fully capable of planing all surfaces to nearly dead-flat and then finish them with a sanding block. That’s a great surface for a highly reflective finish. And while a perfect and smooth finish would have been spectacular in 1769, it’s unavoidable, plastic and mundane now.
Today I finished my first 15th-century dining table for the “Furniture of Necessity,” and I figured that by leaving these toolmarks, I saved an entire day of labor. And I like the table better than if it were perfectly extruded from a wide-belt sander.
Before I started writing woodworking books, I had a magazine reader ask me about my photography book. Photography book? What?
Yup. “Men Defined: Nudes,” which is still available at Amazon. That’s not my writing, I promise. If I were to write an erotic non-woodworking book it would be about goats.
It’s an odd experience to see your name on a book you didn’t write. And I had that same weird feeling when I saw “Classic American Furniture” by Christopher Schwarz advertised on ShopWoodworking.com.
My first thought: Hey, you other Christopher Schwarz. Stop invading my topic. I’ve carefully steered clear of writing about the erotic world of men in black and white.
As it turns out, I did write this book. Kinda sorta.
“Classic American Furniture” is a compilation of a lot of projects I built for the now-defunct Woodworking Magazine (yes, I miss it, too). In addition to my stuff, there also are a fair number of technique pieces and small projects from the other editors.
I finally got a copy of the book yesterday and spent some time paging through it. It’s actually a nice compilation of projects with a pared-back American aesthetic (and not a single nude person in sight). There’s Some Shaker and Arts & Crafts pieces, of course. But also some simple back-country pieces that are unadorned and nicely proportioned.
If you never saw Woodworking Magazine, this book is a good introduction to it and the approach we took to building and finishing pieces.
I receive no royalties from this book, FYI. And I’m not an affiliate with ShopWoodworking (or anyone). So I have no financial interest in it. Check it out here. It’s on sale for abou $20.
So where is Peter Galbert’s book “Chairmaker’s Notebook” that was supposed to ship from the printer on March 20? The book is supposed to leave the Tennessee printer today and arrive in our warehouse either tomorrow or Friday.
