Despite having lived in Kentucky for 30 years, I’ve never visited the South Union Shaker Village in Logan County, Kentucky. I’ve driven past it more than 100 times – easy. But when Megan and I were headed to Nashville last week, I resolved to tap the brakes, turn off I-65 and visit the colony.
Like the other Shaker sites in Kentucky and Ohio, the South Union Shaker Village doesn’t receive the attention of the East Coast colonies. And that’s too bad. These western colonies are filled with gorgeous architecture and beautiful furniture.
All that remains of the South Union Village are a handful of buildings, but the site’s founders and conservators have managed to collect an impressive number of furniture pieces (especially firewood boxes) and display them in a restored environment.
If you are ever in Western Kentucky, you should definitely stop for a few hours to visit the village.
The trip reminded me that Megan had been working on a book about the Western Shakers (I’ve been helping with the photography) that came to a stop when the pandemic closed up all the museums and access to private collections. I hope this visit will help rekindle our efforts to shine a light on all the amazing Shaker furniture and buildings that have been mostly ignored by people in the wider world.
The short video shows some of the highlights from our visit.
Good news: We have Crucible GoDrillas and Center Squares back in stock and ready for immediate shipment. We assembled and inspected a huge bunch, so we hope they won’t sell out.
If you are wondering what a GoDrilla does, or why you would want a Center Square, check out the pages in our store, which have videos that (I hope) explain their utility.
Jennie’s hacking knife, which fell into my possession.
After Jennie Alexander died in 2018, she left a house full of tools, chairs and bits and pieces from her long life of woodworking, research and writing. For several months, her friends and family sorted through the possessions and distributed them so they would do the most good.
Shortly thereafter, we traveled to Jennie’s Baltimore home for one last time: to shoot step photos for the third and final edition of “Make a Chair From a Tree.” As we were leaving her home on Light Street, Jennie’s daughter Harper implored us to take some of the objects that no one else would.
Otherwise they were going to charity or the resale shop.
Among the few things I took was this hacking knife. Clearly blacksmith-made, it’s a heavy sucker at 1 lb. 4 oz. It’s made from 3/8”-thick steel. Overall the knife is 9-1/2″ long. The blade is 4-1/2″ long and 2-7/16″ tall. The handle is 5” long and 3/4” tall.
“I may have made that one,” Tom replied. “I think I also made one with a more shapely handle. The first one I made (which looks much like that) J. Alexander rejected because it wasn’t heavy enough to split pegs by knocking the cleaver and pegwood against the chopping block once the cleaver was stuck in the wood. The lightness hasn’t been a problem for me since I never made the super long pegs that J. did. I just strike it a couple times with the mallet, and the wood pops apart.”
Here you can see the sharp taper of its blade.
I’ve been using the knife for a few years now and think it’s perfect. I use it to split pegs, of course, but also to make short sticks. It also has a very Jennie-esque quality to it as it is so outwardly plain. In fact, it didn’t even really look like a tool when I first saw it among the clutter in her workshop.
But now I wouldn’t be without it.
I get occasional questions about the knife after I showed it in use in “The Stick Chair Book.” Plus we get asked: When will Crucible make them for sale? I think the answer is never. This is a tool that is best made by your local blacksmith. So take the dimensions listed above to their shop and see about getting your own Jennie Alexander Hacking Knife. You’ll be glad you did.
Editor’s note: Here’s another essay I wrote in support of my new “Build a Stick Chair” video. My plan was to record these essays and set them to music with some images. I tried it, and it looked like the most boring slideshow with a narrator on quaaludes. So I present my script here, which you can read in your most excited voice (in your head).
“A Jet Workshop”
When I worked for a woodworking magazine, we had a formula for the sorts of projects we printed in its pages. We always had a certain number of Shaker pieces, a slightly smaller number of Arts & Crafts pieces, some “Country” pieces (whatever “country” is). Plus a handful of 18th-century pieces, mid-century modern pieces, workshop pieces, jigs and fixtures.
The formula was safe. It was based on the thousands of subscriber surveys we sent out year after year. And it worked.
But it was also boring.
Every inspiring Shaker piece has been published to death by every woodworking magazine on the continent. Ditto with Arts & Crafts. Yes, there is a lot of amazing material you could mine from the 18th-century. But a magazine can publish only so many 18th-century pieces before readers revolt (most of those pieces are challenging to build; magazine readers tend to be beginners).
I love these classic furniture styles. If you like the decorative arts, I am sure you do as well. But there’s not much left to explore.* And I have little interest in walking the same path that has been trodden for the last 50 years.
So – and I know you’re shocked to hear me say it – this is one of the great things about stick chairs, and vernacular furniture in general.
It is a field that is largely unexplored. There is no book on stools – one of the most common pieces of furniture on the planet. There are only a handful of books on vernacular chairs, chests, beds, tables and shelving. It’s like there’s a whole planet filled with furniture that has been almost completely ignored.
For the last 18 years, I have specialized in researching and building stick chairs, and I still feel like I’ve only scratched the surface of what’s out there. You can do it, too. How? Look at lots of old paintings. When I look at old paintings – a great source of information on early rural life – I ignore the people and focus on the furniture.
When you do this, you will wonder why there has never been a book on settles. Gate-leg tables. Pig benches. Plus all the convertible furniture that was necessary for regular people to live in a small space – benches that converted into beds. Chests of drawers that also held chickens. Dry sinks that stored all manner of kitchen necessities.
The reason there are few books on this vernacular stuff is, of course, money.
Rich people don’t care about this stuff. That’s because your rich friends aren’t going to be impressed that you have a beat-up bacon settle in your boudoir. All the money for research, coffee-table books and museums goes to the high-style stuff because it was the stuff owned by the rich people in the past.
Rich people loved it and desired it. So it must be important.
I’m not rich. And I’m guessing you aren’t either. So why don’t we explore *our* furniture past? The stuff that was made by the person who needed it. The stuff that wasn’t designed to impress the neighbors. The stuff that looks better the more it gets used.
It might be our furniture past. But with a little work it also might be our furniture present and our furniture future.
— Christopher Schwarz
* There is some new ground to be explored. But alas, we have to twist Megan’s arm to make it happen.
Templates are the foundation of my design process. While I occasionally make a full-size mock-up of a new design using cheap wood, it’s my templates that guide the process.
And when I teach a class, I encourage students to trace whatever templates they like onto the huge sheets of butcher paper we keep here. My first chair teacher – Dave Fleming – offered me the same courtesy in 2003, and I still have those templates today (stored in my basement).
Other teachers were not as forthcoming. They either said “no” or insisted on selling the information. Woodworking is a tough business, so I can’t blame them. But I’d rather lose a few dollars and see more people make their own chairs.
If you are just getting started, I encourage you to make a set of templates. If you’d like to experiment with one of my sets (drawn by Josh Cook), download the file below and print it out at your local office supply store. The plans are drawn at full-size – 100 percent.
I like to make my templates using 1/8” hardboard. It is inexpensive, doesn’t warp as much as plywood does and its edges stay crisper than those of MDF. I affix the paper drawings to the hardboard with spray adhesive (available anywhere). Then I cut out the templates on the band saw and refine the shapes with hand tools.
Hardboard is simply wood pulp and linseed oil, so it cuts cleanly and doesn’t wreck your tools’ edges unnecessarily.
I write a lot of information on my finished templates – resultant angles, notes from previous builds and details on angles and joints.
But the most important thing I write on the template is the date that I made it. That helps me figure out if I am moving forward or backward in time with my designs (either direction is OK).
The templates above are from my latest video “Build a Stick Chair,” which is available in our store.
