Because of the bourbon industry in Kentucky, oak barrels are pretty much everywhere – even in the home centers where they are sold as planters or rain barrels. I use a used barrel as my garbage can in my shop.
Cooperage is one of the things I hope to study in my next life, when I get this furniture thing mastered in about 50 more years.
So I love to read about the craft, and the tools fascinate me – particularly the unusual compasses used for fitting the lid.
Today I’ve pulled two 1960s-era articles from The Woodworker on coopering for you to check out. One of the great things about the magazine was its dedication to documenting the traditional crafts as they were disappearing in England in the 20th century. Download the articles here:
If you are interested in coopering classes, check out Country Workshops, where Carl Swensson teaches Swiss cooperage. And Tillers International, where they regularly teach basic cooperage.
The two most influential people in my life as a woodworker have been Charles H. Hayward, the finest woodworking writer of the 20th century, and Carl Bilderback, a union carpenter and tool collector in La Porte, Ind.
I count on Hayward to guide me in the shop. I count on Carl to tell me the truth about my writing, my woodworking and life in general.
I met Carl when he phoned me at Popular Woodworking to tell me that a short article I’d written about a block plane was seriously flawed.
“What you wrote was right,” he said. “But you don’t know that you’re right or why you are right.”
Carl’s startling and entirely correct observation (it’s difficult to explain, but it involves Leonard Bailey and patents), led to a friendship that is more important to me than any tool I own or anything I’ve built or written.
Even more important than Carl’s ability to tell me the truth has been that he is – hands down – the most generous person I’ve ever met. I’ve watched Carl give away dozens of tools to young woodworkers to start them in the craft.
When he showed up at the Lie-Nielsen Hand Tool Event in Cincinnati this spring, I hugged him, and the first or second thing he said to me was: “I have a miter box. Who should I give it to?”
But he does this without seeming like some saint. Ask him about Oprah Winfrey and screws, and you’ll get an off-color story that will make you spit your drink through your nose.
If you’ve ever met Carl – or if you haven’t had the pleasure – I encourage you to watch this hour-long video where Slav Jelesijevich and Carl paw through his basement shop and shoot the crap about tools and woodworking.
You’ll get to see some tools that will amaze (four panther-head saws?) and get a taste of Carl’s humor, deep knowledge of tools and loyalty to the Mid-West Tool Collectors Association. (And by the way, if you aren’t a member, fix that. As an anarchist, I can say it is one of the few organizations I’m proud to be a member of.)
Most of all, hold onto the Carls in your life. They won’t be around forever, and we all could use a regular dose of truth and generosity with no chaser.
For those of you who missed my blog entries on Pégas blades (here), the bad news is that Tools for Working Wood is temporarily sold out of these outstanding, durable and less-expensive Swiss-made coping-saw blades.
The good news is that Knew Concepts now has 60 packages of the 18-point skip-tooth blades, which they are selling for only $5 per dozen. Go here. I cannot say enough good things about these blades.
Also, ShopWoodworking.com now has the four-volume set of “The Practical Woodworker” in the store in paperback. The set is $65 and will ship in late October or early November. If you missed out on the hardback set, which was excellent, this is your chance to add these books to your library.
“The Practical Woodworker” is a collection of writings from early 20th-century authors on handwork. Just about every aspect of the craft is covered in the four books. Need to build a crate? A chicken coop? Learn French polish? It’s all in there. It’s one of the first places I consult when I’m looking for a technique or plan.
Oh, and the other stuff? “l’Art du menuisier: The Book of Plates” goes to the printer on Monday. And Roy Underhill’s “Calvin Cobb: Radio Woodworker!” is about a week away from the printer. Megan Fitzpatrick, the editor of that book, will post an update on the cover this weekend (right Megan?).
Every week a customer suggests we sell posters, postcards, calendars, stationary or sketchbooks that feature a piece of artwork or photograph from one of our Lost Art Press products.
It’s flattering, but we decline. During my tenure in publishing, I’ve studied this market and have concluded that this is how you make money on posters that do not feature kittens, human flesh or dumb motivational sayings.
Select the most popular images from your publishing business; scale and clean the images so they will reproduce well on heavy coated paper stock.
Find a press that can hold the line screen appropriate for a quality reproduction job.
Purchase 2,000 posters so you can reduce the unit cost and charge less than $20 for the poster – a key price point.
Sell 200.
Warehouse the 1,800, running up a monthly fee to store them until your profit is gone and someone decides to pulp them.
Sell a kidney.
Profit!
Rather than lose another internal organ, let’s try this. Last night I made a high-resolution scan of one of the pages from this post on furniture styles. I scanned it at the maximum resolution we can handle, cleaned it up in Photoshop for about two hours and scaled it so it would print nicely at 18” x 24” – a common and inexpensive ($13) poster size at Staples.
You can download the high-resolution file here (it’s more than 50mb):
You have our permission to take it to a printer and have them make you a poster for your own use. If 50 people send me a photo of this poster on the wall of their shop, I’ll do another one for free. We lose less money this way.
