Jennie Alexander has asked for help getting a full cite on a quotation that gets thrown out a lot in the world of hand-tool woodworking.
Here’s the quote: “Because people are dead, it does not follow that they were stupid.”
This is often attributed to David Pye and is said to be from his book “The Nature and Art of Workmanship” (Cambridge University Press, 1968). I don’t have this book (shame on me, I know).
If you own this book, could you check the above quote to make sure it’s accurate and report back the page number?
“Shaker Side Table,” my latest DVD with Lie-Nielsen Toolworks, is now in stock through the Lost Art Press store.
It is $40 plus domestic shipping. Click here to see it in the store.
The reason this DVD is so expensive is because it is more than four hours long. In it, I show every operation in building this table completely by hand, from tapering the legs to applying the finish. The DVD is, in essence, all the demonstrations I would show students during a week-long class on building this table.
Also, I am not a quiet worker. During every operation I continue to talk, explaining the method I’m using and the pros and cons of alternative methods.
As a result, the DVD is dense with information. And like a growler of imperial IPA, it is not designed to be consumed all in one sitting.
When the DVD came out, I was terrified that viewers would recoil at the length of the program. It is longer than any woodworking DVD I’ve been involved with. To my surprise, reaction has been good. Very good in fact.
My next DVD with Lie-Nielsen, which they are editing now, will be a similar approach to building a boarded chest entirely by hand. So if you like the side table DVD, you’ll probably like the boarded chest video as well.
As always, these DVDs are possible only because of the good people at Lie-Nielsen Toolworks. Left to my own devices, I would never appear in a DVD (or teach a class, or talk to a woodworking club, or attend a show). I look like a lab animal and sound like a barking dog. But Thomas Lie-Nielsen is of the mind that many woodworkers like to learn using video, and he’s right.
When I make a DVD, the producers always give me a certain number of free copies to give to my mom or (in the case of some really dull DVDs) to use as drink coasters.
As a result, I have 19 copies of “A Traditional Tool Chest in Two Days” sitting on my desk right now that I would rather be somewhere else. I have enough drink coasters.
So we are going to sell these DVDs at half price to our loyal blog readers. Instead of $24.99, you’ll pay $12 plus domestic shipping.
Why did I call it the “traitor’s” tool chest in the title? Read here.
We only have 19 of these. So if you want one, click now or forever hold your mouse.
Leave it to Jeff Burks to turn up a bunch of images of early trestle tables that I haven’t seen before.
As you’ll see from the gallery below, these trestle tables are of the old variety – two independent horses that are topped by a large board, suitable for carving up your meal (or your unliked saint).
Most of the horses have three legs, though there are some that have interesting feet that are flat on the floor. Also interesting is how many trestles have decorative panels between the legs.
One warning before you start browsing these images: A few are a bit on the graphic side. If you ever wondered about why these tables were covered by tablecloths when people ate at them, this set of images should help you answer that question.
As always, thanks to Jeff Burks for the original source material here. His research and publishing here speeds our efforts at Lost Art Press.
Now that “To Make As Perfectly As Possible: Roubo on Marquetry” has been birthed, or put to bed, or sent to press, or whatever cliché is appropriate (I only know that my part is done), we now draw your attention to the curtain marked “To Make As Perfectly as Possible: Roubo on Furniture Making,” behind which the work has continued unabated even through the seemingly endless tribulations of Roubo on Marquetry.”
See, I am learning from Roubo: one paragraph, one sentence, no problem.
Much of “Roubo on Furniture Making” is fairly straightforward, seeming all the more so after six years of our interpreting and expressing Roubo’s voice. Some days I find I can get through as many as a dozen pages of Michele’s raw transliteration, mostly to clarify the idiosyncratic jargon and syntax A-J employs. This process can be a bit humorous as Michele does not even begin to know what particular tools are (or do), while Philippe – though superbly skilled in their uses – identifies them only in his native French. He never needed to converse in English about the arcane details of 18th-century French woodworking tools, so he is relying on me to phrase things properly in the language of a 21st-century Anglophone.
It is excellent that“Roubo on Furniture Making” is going well because in sheer scale it renders “Roubo on Marquetry”a mere warm-up act: This one is almost TWICE as large as our first volume.
For example, this week I am working my way through (again!) Volume 1 Section 1 Chapter 5: “Some Tools Belonging to Woodworkers, Their Different Types, Forms and Uses,” which contains the much-heralded Plate 11 “Interior View of the Furniture Maker’s Studio” and its ballyhooed image of the French Workbench, the source of much of Schwarzophinia.
Many hands have given at least part of the text for this plate the old college try. I am unashamed to suggest that our 17-page treatment of this plate’s text is as accurate, nuanced, understandable and downright elegant as any thus far.
That text and the remaining passages of the chapter delve excruciatingly DEEP into the esoterica of the 18th-century tool box and workshop. Really, Andy, did you need to give us five pages on the moving fillister plane?
At more than 100 pages of working manuscript, this chapter would make a fine little book all by itself (still, it is barely half the length of Vol. III Section 3 Chapter 13: “Tools and Machines for Furniture Making”), but the thrill of this chapter is a near-perfect analog to my new status of “retirement.” I am busier and working harder than ever, yet I simply cannot wipe the smile from my face.
