Lost Art Press

Category: Joiner’s Work

Feet for a Box with a Drawer

Posted on by meghanlostartpress
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This large box with a drawer below is my interpretation of this rare form from the 17th century.


This is an excerpt from “Joiner’s Work” by Peter Follansbee. 

Now things differ significantly from the basic box. Let’s start with the feet.

I’m no turner; I think of myself as a joiner who does some turning. I only know turning on the pole lathe, so I can’t guarantee that the methods I use will translate to other lathes. The lathe is a simple machine: a moveable “poppet” slides between the beds/rails of the lathe. One upright extends above the bed. Embedded into this and the moveable poppet are two iron points – these are what the turning blanks spin on. A cord wrapped around the workpiece connects to a long springy pole in the ceiling and a treadle underneath the lathe. Stomp on the treadle and the pole bends, the workpiece turns toward you and you can make a cut with your gouge or chisel, which is braced against a tool rest. Then let up the pressure on the treadle, the pole pulls back and the workpiece “unwinds” so you can start all over again. Very rhythmic.

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The pole lathe, like a shaving horse, is a folk tool. Each one is different, but they are all essentially the same – a means to make the workpiece turn so you can cut it into cylindrical shapes.

I sometimes have turned feet from white oak; but I’ve mostly used maple to great effect (maple turnings are typically stained black, said to be an imitation of ebony).

Start with a billet about 16″ long and almost 2″ in diameter. I turn a foot on one end, test-fit its tenon, then burnish it and cut it off. Then re-center the turning and repeat. Or rough out several feet, trim the first tenon, then cut that foot off and re-center and resume turning.

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My view of the lathe. On the left, the moveable poppet secured between the rails, or bed, of the lathe with a wooden wedge. On the right, one upright extends above the bed to form a fixed poppet. I’ve wrapped the cord around the workpiece and it’s tied above to the pole and below to the treadle. The workpiece spins on two iron points. One is threaded to make fine adjustments. Iron brackets running through the poppets support the tool rest.

The foot is a simple enough shape that I don’t make a pattern stick, but you certainly could. I just mark the 2″ height of the foot, with about a 3/4″ long tenon beyond that. Define the shoulder that separates the foot from the tenon with a gouge and skew. If you have a parting tool, that’s an excellent tool for this step. Someday I have to dig mine out and sharpen it, but in the meantime, I use the skew and gouge approach. The foot consists of a pear-shaped cylinder, a cove and a collar. I scribe a line defining the collar and cut in under that with the gouge to begin shaping the cove. I alternate coming in from the left and right to help open up the cove.

After roughing out the shape, a few light shavings bring the final smooth shape to completion. The best surface comes from the skew chisel.

For me, turning is always a lesson in “enough is enough.” I often have a tendency to think I can go back one more time to make it better. This sometimes works, but more often results in disaster. The pole lathe is helpful because it allows me to make mistakes more slowly than a faster lathe.

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Here I roughed out several feet, finished the tenon on the left and will cut that foot off and repeat.

The feet have 1/2″-diameter tenons that fit through two 5/8″ x 1-1/2″ x 16″ slats of oak. I usually turn green wood, so I leave the tenons a bit thick so that when they shrink they will fit 1/2″ holes bored through the slats.

Leave the tenons extra long, too, but with a slight taper toward their ends. Size the tenons by forcing this tapered end into the hole (a test hole in dry hardwood is best, rather than risking deforming the actual piece). This burnishes an impression on the tenon.

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Now the foot is secured in the slat. For my lifetime at least.

Then pare the tenon down to this impressed area. These can go back on the lathe for this trimming, or you can just shave them with a knife or chisel. This is another one of those patience things – if you hurry and drive in a too-tight tenon, it can split the thin, narrow slat. Once the feet are tenoned into the slats, split the protruding tenons from above, then drive a wooden wedge into each split to secure the feet in place.

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I bored a pilot hole for these nails, reaching through the box bottom and just into the box sides.

Saw and pare them flush. Then bore pilot holes through the slats from below and nail these foot assemblies to the bottom. Depending on the thickness of your bottom boards and foot assemblies, your nail might reach through the bottom and into the bottom edge of the box ends.

— Meghan B.

Free Excerpt of ‘Joiner’s Work’

Posted on by Kara Uhl

For a more in-depth look of Peter Follansbee’s “Joiner’s Work,” check out the (free!) PDF excerpt we’ve posted here. It includes the table of contents, dedication, acknowledgements, introduction and the bookstand chapter.

While copy editing Peter’s book I was delighted with its rarity. It’s difficult to write a how-to, project-based book in a conversational tone well. Peter excels at this. He treats the reader as if he or she is in the same room and there’s no stuffiness, no holier-than-thou, no “my way is the right way.” He makes his recommendations, tells the reader what has worked for him – and what has not – and emphasizes that it’s fine to do it another way. This style of writing reads so easily but its casualness reminds me of the Steve Jobs quote: “Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple.”

Oh, and Peter is a master of boosting one’s confidence without making you feel like a child. Its subtle, but brilliant. You’ll see. And when things do go wrong? He promises you he gets it – for almost everything he warns you about, he recognizes his own humbling experiences.

I could go on. But just check out the excerpt. This one is a joy to read.

— Kara Gebhart Uhl

Update on Peter Follansbee’s ‘Joiner’s Work’

Posted on by Lost Art Press

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The printing plant has finished its work on Peter Follansbee’s new book, “Joiner’s Work,” and it will be trucked to our Indiana warehouse on Monday. We’re not certain when it will start mailing out to people who placed pre-publication orders, but my best guess is it will be this week.

If you haven’t placed an order, this is the last opportunity to get a free pdf of the book with your order. Once the book starts shipping, the price of the book plus the pdf will be $61.25, up from $49.

Yesterday I received a sample from the printer and the book looks great. Oak is featured on 100 percent of its pages. You will not find an oakier tome.

— Christopher Schwarz

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Carving a Braided Pattern

Posted on by meghanlostartpress

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This finished version of the braid can be further cleaned up with light cuts of the gouge, or left as-is. There’s a wide spectrum of what works with this carving.


This is an excerpt from “Joiner’s Work” by Peter Follansbee.

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The bottom margin, the angled strike of the #7 gouge, the horizontal centerline and the punched mark just to the right of the gouge cut – the foundation for this pattern.

A braided pattern builds on the previous example (of the gouge cut). It’s cut with the same technique, but this time, for those who like measuring stuff, it is marked out in a measured spacing. For the braid, the layout is the key.

Start by striking the bottom margin with a marking gauge. Then use 3/4″ #7 gouge and strike it just as in the first exercise, only now the incised cut is not perpendicular to the margin, but tilts a little to the right. The top of this incised cut shows where to strike the horizontal centerline. Mark that line, then strike a round punch just to the right of the gouge cut. My round punch is an old 5/32″ nail set.

Now mark the height of the top margin, making it the same distance off the horizontal centerline as the bottom margin. It’s simple really. Strike the gouge from the other side of the punched dot, aiming in the other direction. Its tilt angle is fixed by the margin/centerline spacing.

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Now it’s automatic pilot. Position the gouge between the punched mark and the margin and go.

With a compass, pace off the spacing of the punched marks on the centerline. These are either the width of the gouge or just a bit more.

Once they’re stepped off, strike each of these with the punch. Bang, bang, bang. Then, take the gouge and strike all the cuts that go down to the left of the punched marks, then those that go up to the right. It’s very orderly.

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All struck, the design almost could stop right there and look just fine. But keep going.

Fiddle around with your spacing on some scrap. You can do it on paper, but you might as well just start working it on wood. It only takes a few minutes. The amount of tilt to the design is determined by the spacing between the centerline and margins, the size of the gouge(s) and the paced-off punch marks. Too steep looks dull; leaned over too far looks stretched out. You’ll know it when you see it.

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Now it’s starting to look like something. Shadows start to make things look better.

Now go back and remove the chip. This chip is shorter in length than what you just did above. Think fingernail parings, crescent moons, that sort of stuff.

Using the same gouge, extend the arcs from the margin curving down into the neighboring cuts. Repeat this at the top and bottom margin.

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This step begins connecting each element.

Now using the narrow #5 gouge, just take its corner and nick the small area from the margins to the curved cuts. You’re just taking a small chip out here; but it helps. The cut comes from the margin in toward the previous gouge cuts.

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The beginning of hollowing. It’s quite a scoop, and a quick turn for the gouge.

You can enhance this carving by hollowing the braid with a more deeply curved gouge (mine’s an antique, similar to a #8 in the Swiss numbering system), modeling the overall pattern. To do this, you need to be aware of grain direction. Start at the centerline and cut down to the left, and repeat this all down the line. Then turn around and work up and to the right. The gouge takes quite a turn in each cut – essentially 90° in a very short space. Hollowing the braid really makes it come to life, creating more light and shadow interplay; that’s what all this carving is about.

— Meghan B.

Seventeenth-century Boxes, Chests and Carving. And More Carving.

Posted on by fitz

Editor’s note: We’ve just sent Peter Follansbee’s book, “Joiner’s Work,” to the printer. It will be released in May. If you order a pre-publication copy from our store you will receive a free pdf of the book at checkout.

I’ve told most of my stories many times. When I first learned woodworking, it was from books. Books and one magazine. Ultimately that led me to taking a workshop/class with John (Jennie) Alexander and Drew Langsner. Some years later, Alexander and I started a correspondence in which we collaborated while 500 miles apart. This correspondence consisted of letters, 35mm slides, notes and photocopies of research/books/museum work. Back and forth these things sailed between Hingham, Mass., and Baltimore, Md. Maybe three or four times a year we’d physically work together. This went on for quite a while, until email came along and changed how we worked. (I lost all the email copies of our collaboration in a hard-drive crash. Let that be a lesson….)

What this means is I have been documenting my woodworking habits, ideas, foibles since about 1989, in words and pictures. I learned how to use a camera, tripod, cable release/self-timers etc. back in those days to shoot slides showing JA what I was doing – while s/he’d do the same down in Baltimore. We ate through a lot of Ektachrome. The good ones we kept, and used in slide lectures to woodworking groups, museum audiences and whoever would sit still for our dog and pony shows.

Interestingly, when I started museum work in 1994, that made my documentation more difficult. It was the audience – no one wanted to see all that gear set up in my shop, so I was limited in how often I could set up my camera stuff. Mostly, then, it was before or after hours during the season, but in the off-season/winter, I just left it in place.

Starting about 1992, JA and I would often talk about “the book,” as in, “we’ll have to put that in the book…” about joinery. That book percolated for 20 years until it became “Make a Joint Stool from a Tree.”

A couple years before that book was done, I had the idea for “my” book – much of the iconic joined and carved furniture of the 17th century: chests and boxes, cupboards, chairs, tables and more. And carving. And more carving. So I wrote and wrote, took pictures and filed things where, in theory, I could find them.

Like the joined stool book, this one got interrupted a few times, but I halved the time it took and then some. We ditched some of the repetition, but I think when you learn the mortise-and-tenon and frame-and-panel, then composing the piece of furniture is not all that complicated. A cupboard is not much different than a chest; the chair and table are like overgrown joint stools, Thus the focus of the new book is boxes and chests and carving. And more carving.

One standout visitor comment at my old job I remember clearly. One of the members of what I call my “craft genealogy,” Bill Coperthwaite, had just died. He was on my mind as I was working that busy November day. I forget what I was making, but it was oak for sure – and a woman watched me for quite a while, we chatted some, and in the end, she turned to her partner and said, “It makes me want to go home and make something!” I hope my new book, “Joiner’s Work,” gets the same reaction.

— Peter Follansbee