A mechanic that is always in a hurry is incapable of doing good honest work. The excitable man who is always “flying around,” and whose tools are never at hand when wanted, does not amount to much; he may be busy all day, and apparently — in fact, does — work hard and seems to get over a great deal of ground, but what he does do is neither fine nor substantial. The cool, calm workman who allows himself neither to be driven nor persuaded to do more than a solid day’s work is the man who leaves his impress on each piece of work he turns out, and a hundred years hence it may be found as good and as solid as the day he completed it; but where! Oh, where! will be the work that was thrown together at the same date, by the man who was always “flying around?”
The Builder & WoodWorker – March, 1881, Fred T. Hodgson, editor.
The following idea is a long shot and likely to end up being a pain in my butt. But here goes.
For those of you signed up to take my class on building a campaign chest in May at the Marc Adams School of Woodworking, one of the biggest challenges is coming up with wood that is worthy.
Frank David at Midwest Woodworking in Norwood, Ohio, has a good stock of wide stock (including hineyloads of mahogany) that is gorgeous, old and fairly priced.
If I can get enough people interested, I’d be happy to try to arrange a visit to Midwest on the Friday before the class begins, May 3. You can pick out the stock that suits your fancy and your budget. You’ll get to see the very awesome Midwest Woodworking lumber stores. And, if you’re not too weird, we can all go to Gordo’s afterward for a great burger and an even better beer.
I promise you that you will be glad you made the trip.
Yeah, I know that this might be impossible for some students who are coming from long distances.
No, I can’t pick out wood for you. I can barely even pick out wood for myself.
Yes, you can come and purchase wood even if you aren’t signed up for the class.
No, I can’t pick out your wood for you and bring it to the class or drop it off at your house.
Yes, you can bring your truck and buy all you want (bring cash. American dollars).
No, I can’t send you photos of some of the boards and purchase them for you.
Yes, you can eat a hamburger from Gordo’s with goat cheese and grape compote and still call yourself a man.
No, I can’t transport your lumber to Indiana for you (I have only a little car).
Midwest is a jewel of a place. If I had any sense I’d never talk about it on the blog, never tell any of my friends about it, and deny it even exists. But I’m an idiot. So come take advantage of my idiocy.
P.S. Honestly, I can’t buy lumber for you. Or transport it. Or store it. Or cut it. I can barely wipe myself. If you need wide mahogany for the class and can’t find any, call Wall Lumber in North Carolina. Or Irion in Pennsylvania.
Teaching a new class is always terrifying exciting. This year, the class I am most excited about teaching is the Campaign Chest class May 6-10 at the Marc Adams School of Woodworking in Franklin, Ind.
I am, as you know, quite nuts for furniture in the campaign style and am eager to vomit forth all the research I’ve been doing on the design and construction of these chests. Plus, I’m eager to teach a class that focuses on a fine piece of furniture using excellent wood and outstanding hardware.
Most of the classes I teach focus on skills – as they should be. So the projects for those classes are designed around the skills and giving students lots of practice.
This class offers a lot of opportunity to build skills – full-blind dovetails, planing highly figured woods, complex hardware installation, fitting fine drawers – and the result is one of my favorite furniture forms.
Plus, we’ll have the full arsenal of machines, assistants and benches at our disposal at the school.
The last time I talked to Marc Adams, he said there are still a handful of spots available in the class. If you are interested in the class, you can read more about it here.
I’ve received several inquires from people asking if this class would be appropriate for a beginning woodworker. Answer: Absolutely. This is a class covering basic carcase construction and a blend of hand- and power-tool techniques.
When I tell people I’m working on a book about “campaign furniture,” the response is usually complete confusion.
Is this, perhaps, the furniture used by presidential candidates on their tour buses?
Once I explain that it was the furniture used by colonials, government workers and military officers during 1790 to 1920, the response is usually utter revulsion.
Is this, perhaps, the furniture of oppression?
And so I just stop telling people I’m working on a book on campaign furniture and just tell them I’m doing a thing on birdhouses for bondage lovers and people who drink human blood.
Sometimes, however, I run into woodworkers who follow my work and have also stumbled onto pieces in this furniture style. They see its honest construction, its simple lines and its durability. It is furniture that is understated and fits in well in a wide variety of settings – many woodworkers have sent me photos of campaign chests they have encountered in Victorian, Arts & Crafts, period and contemporary homes.
So does campaign furniture have political baggage? The answer is: Who cares?
Every furniture style can be associated with something unsavory. Any piece of American furniture before 1860 can be labeled “the furniture of slavers.” Furniture before the 19th Amendment was passed? Furniture of the people who hate women. Shaker? Furniture of people who despise reproduction. You can twist and contort history however you like. (A true history of any style of furniture is more complex than a blog entry can capture.)
Instead, I tend to focus on furniture’s form, its construction and its beauty. If we carry those things forward – and discard the retrograde social baggage associated with some (or all) furniture styles – we might just … I don’t know… find something interesting to build?
— Christopher Schwarz
P.S. I’m in Australia for the next few weeks, where I hope to see some campaign furniture. If you’d like to see what I’m doing in Melbourne, check out my blog at Popular Woodworking Magazinehere and here.
It’s not often that I’m thrilled to paw through another man’s garbage, but when that man is Frank David….
Teak is expensive stuff – upwards of $50/board foot at times. So every cut counts. And when it came time to buy stuff for the interior guts of this campaign chest, I was thinking of using walnut, pine or oak. But then I saw a magnificent pile of narrow teak offcuts while hunting through the stacks of lumber at Midwest Woodworking.
These pieces of 2-1/2”-wide, 4/4 rough stock were the leftovers from rip cuts made decades ago. Frank stashed them in the attic of his shop in Norwood, Ohio. Some of his employees asked if they could have these teak “rippers” to burn for firewood in their homes.
Frank merely raised an eyebrow at their request.
These rippers are perfect for web frames. So I purchased a few of these (at about $15/board foot) and built the two web frames for my latest campaign chest with them today.
Like all the other old pieces of teak from Midwest, this stuff is like a buttery dream (which is better than a wet dream but not as good as a lard dream) to work with. And I saved enough teak from my wide boards to scrounge just enough teak to make a copy of Napoleon’s desk for my book on campaign furniture.
