One of the things I enjoy about visiting my father in Charleston, S.C., is you are always walking distance from stunning furniture from all over the world and across several centuries.
I spent this morning collecting images, details and dimensions for my next book and stumbled into a store I’d never been in before. It specializes in furniture from the West and East Indies – specifically campaign furniture.
Ever since I was a kid, I’ve loved campaign furniture – my grandparents had several pieces – and I’ve always wondered why it wasn’t a popular style among woodworkers. It’s manly, simple, robust and (generally) well proportioned.
The store’s owner has been importing it into Charleston for about 15 years and showed me a lot of construction details I hadn’t yet considered, such as how examples that used teak as a secondary wood were much more likely to be the real deal. Teak is quite bug-resistant. Dovetail joinery that didn’t rely on hide glue was a good thing because of the wetness, heat and bugs that would eat the hide glue.
If someone else doesn’t pick up this idea and run with it, campaign furniture might be a book in my future. Earlier this year I proposed a campaign chest project to Popular Woodworking Magazine – I haven’t gotten a “yes” or “no” yet. Perhaps these photos will sway Megan.
Earlier this year, amateur woodworker Rob Thomas made a bold decision – to learn hand-tool woodworking using “The Joiner & Cabinet Maker” from 1839 as a road map.
And to hold his nose to the grindstone (and ensure he had the tools to do it) he started a campaign on Kickstarter.com to fund his tool and material purchases in exchange for items as small as a patch (see above) and as large as the full-on chest of drawers.
What’s Kickstarter? Visit Rob’s page here to read all about it.
Since launching his Kickstarter.com campaign, Rob has been busy building packing boxes – the first project from “The Joiner & Cabinet Maker.” Most readers skip right to “The Schoolbox” in the book, a sweet little dovetailed chest.
I think those people are missing out. The Packing Box project has four critical lessons that will enlighten any hand-tool woodworker.
1. Many times the ends of your stock can be left long in nailed work and then trimmed square after assembly. Yup, you don’t four-square everything before assembly. When I first learned this detail, I slapped my forehead repeatedly.
2. You learn how to make rub joints with hot hide glue. No clamps.
3. You learn to use cut nails in carcase construction. Cut nails are awesome.
4. You learn to clinch/clench nails.
When I started working with my daughter Katy on woodworking, the first project we built together was The Packing Box, which we sized to hold the DVDs for her class at school.
I encourage you to bookmark Rob’s blog, The Joiner’s Apprentice, to follow him as he builds his way through “The Joiner & Cabinet Maker.” It’s quite interesting to watch his thought processes and see the results.
And Speaking of Inspiration…
Since I first read about Kickstarter.com I’ve been thinking of starting a campaign to help fund the purchase of the Lost Art Press LLC headquarters. As some of you know, I’ve been actively hunting for 19th-century buildings in Covington, Ky., to house our book inventory (which has completely filled our basement and storage shed), house our workshop, mailing facilities and provide for a storefront for our publishing activities.
And on Tuesday, my dream building came on the market.
It’s the Covington Brewery Building, an Italianate building with three storefronts and six apartments above, all in pretty good shape. The building was the headquarters for the John Brenner Brewing Co. in Covington. And it was part of a long-gone campus of brewing facilities on Scott Street in Covington.
The price? Less than $200,000.
I’ve been working on selling the idea to my wife, Lucy, but she is the far more rational person in our relationship.
My plan is to offer classes in building custom workbenches and tool chests as part of the Kickstarter campaign. She (wisely) worries about the maintenance on such a huge building.
In any case, Rob Campbell has inspired me to grab the dice and shake them in my hands. We’ll see if I actually roll them.
After a few of my tools ended up in other people’s tool chests (by accident) during classes, I decided to mark all my tools and the projects I build with a “pair of compasses,” which is the Lost Art Press logo.
I did a lot of research into the different makers of steel stamps a few years ago, and I settled on InfinityStamps.com. And I have nothing but praise for the company, the customer service, the quick turnaround and the final product.
You can send them anything to make your logo – I sent them a scan of the compasses from Joseph Moxon’s “Mechanick Exercises.” They took that .jpg and converted it into a rasterized image that could be scaled and turned into a steel stamp.
A couple days after submitting my scan, the customer service rep sent me a proof of what my stamp would look like.
I was completely skeptical because of the high amount of detail in the proof. I called the guy and he insisted that the stamp would look like the proof he sent.
So I gave it the green light (yes, I paid full price and blah, blah, blah).
The stamp arrived a couple weeks later, and I went mad stamping everything – everything – in the house (241-KIDS never found out, whew).
If you are looking for a good maker’s stamp, I recommend InfinityStamps.com without reservation.
“Ebenezer,” continued John, ” I have come to ask you a question for my mother. I want her to buy me a chest of tools, and she says she will, if you think it is a good plan. And I knew you would think it was a good plan.”
“No,” said Ebenezer, “I don’t think any such thing.”
“Why not?” asked John, much surprised.
“Because boys can’t do anything with carpenter’s tools,” said Ebenezer.
“Why, yes,” said John, “I could make a great many things with them. Think how many things you can do with your tools.”
“What you need most,” said Ebenezer, “in making things is skill, not tools.”
“Skill!” repeated John, much surprised. “We could not do anything if we had ever so much skill, unless we had tools to work with.”
“That is possible,” said Ebenezer; “but still, if you have skill, you can do a great many things with very few tools, but without the skill you cannot do anything, if you have all the tools in the world. To give a chest of tools to a boy who does not know how to use them, is like giving a pair of spectacles and a telescope to a blind man.”
Jacob Abbot’s “Boy’s Own Workshop” is a fine little book about a boy named John Gay and his driving passion to build things from wood – everything from a workbench to a pond for his little brother, Benny. Though your 21st-century eyes might find the language stilted and the lessons a bit on the Victorian side, I urge you to give it a serious look. (Dude, it’s a free book.)
If you can look past the 1866-era mores, you will find that John Gay has the heart of a true craftsman. He wants to learn how to do things right – he is willing to sign on as an apprentice with a local carpenter. And he takes great pains to do his work neatly.
And while John Gay is someone we might all identify with, the real hero of the book is Ebenezer, the 18-year-old carpenter who guides John’s education as a woodworker. Despite his young age in the book, Ebenezer dispenses the kind of wisdom that 21st-century woodworkers need.
His patience for the craft rubs off on John. His maxims for workbench design are in line with mine, for the most part. Ebenezer doesn’t think John should build a tool chest – his reasons are interesting. And his lessons on layout are worth the price of the book (dude, it’s free).
If Google Books didn’t have such an excellent scan of this book, I’d would consider republishing it. But there is no need. Go and get this book for your computer or portable reader. It’s just the thing to read as the nights get colder.
“The customer is always wrong,” Felix Klipstein in the John Brown column #129, December 2002
I never got to meet John Brown, the Welsh chairmaker, artist, writer and author of “The Anarchist Woodworker” column in Good Woodworking magazine. But he is with me in the shop every day.
I saw one of his Welsh stick chairs in Good Woodworking in the 1990s, and it changed me in an instant. I knew that the chairs he’d dug up from the rustic countryside and dragged into the modern shop were exactly the type of chair I wanted to build.
Yes, I like Windsor and ladderback chairs. But Welsh stick chairs, which look more primitive and animal-like, are far more interesting to build.
I wanted to take a class with Brown, but I missed out on his short visits to the United States. And going to the United Kingdom in the 1990s to learn to build chairs was just a crazy idea with my salary and my young family.
So I sought out closer chairmakers to learn about Welsh chairs, which took me to Cobden, Ontario, and Paint Lick, Ky. Yet it has always been Brown’s chairs that I have been studying and striving for.
This fall I finished two chairs that are influenced by chairmaker Don Weber (I love the rake and splay of his legs), by Brown (the four-spindle back is classic Brown), and a little Schwarz. I lightened the arm bow, altered the seat plan and designed the crest rail from scratch.
When I sat down these chairs for the first time, I wanted to smoke a cigarette – and I don’t smoke. But Brown did (check out his book “Welsh Stick Chairs” for some great photos of this). So I might be getting close.
