A Shaker rocking chair from the Union Village in Southeast Ohio.
Whenever I am asked to build a rocking chair, I say: “Sorry, I don’t make them. They are a totally different animal than what I build.”
But if you could centrifuge the polite Southerner out of my response, it might sound more like: “Gawd, I cannot abide rocking chairs.”
I know. It’s a weird hill to die on. But I have honestly never liked rocking chairs. I don’t like their limited functionality. I don’t like sitting in them. And I don’t like the way they look.
Some of you are thinking (while flinging your pizza crusts at the computer screen) that I have perhaps never sat in a good rocking chair. Not true. I have been to the mountain in Rancho Cucamonga. The first time I met Sam Maloof, he took me into his restored childhood home and let me sit in every one of the chairs there, including multiple rockers. The chairs were beautiful in every way. But when I sat in them, I felt the same way when I sit in any rocker – unsteady.
I like a chair that feels sturdy when it embraces you – not roll back on its heels like a tipsy aunt at a wedding. My regular chairs can be used for multiple tasks. You can type at a desk. Eat at a dining table. Play a guitar. Or sit back with a drink. And if you want to “rock,” you can tip back on the chair’s rear legs and balance.
Some people think this is savagery. I think it’s the best thing in the world.
Have you ever tried eating at the dinner table in a rocking chair? Or typing? I have, and it’s not fun.
I know you are thinking: Think of the children! Rocking chairs are designed to lull babies to sleep. That didn’t work with my kids. We had a rocking chair in the nursery and it just seemed to make them spit up more on my shoulder.
To be honest, I think rocking chairs are more symbolic than functional. Here in the South they are on most every porch. The Cracker Barrel restaurants will have 20 of them lined up outside for people waiting for their fried chicken dinner. The rocking chair symbolizes leisure time and relaxation. And maybe I’m just too tightly wound for that.
Or maybe I just get motion sick too easily. Mom says when I was a baby I’d throw up my hot dog lunch all over the car window during even a short trip.
So perhaps I should take two dramamine and shut the heck up.
Editor’s note: This is part of our series featuring some of our favorite columns from “Honest Labour: The Charles H. Hayward” years, along with a few sentences about why these particular columns hit the mark.
This column from 1942 speaks to the need to pass on our hard-earned skills, and as a teacher (and a member of the human race), that’s of utmost importance to me. What also strikes a chord is Hayward’s discussion in the opening paragraph of today’s work being divorced from creativity. While his “today” is more than half a century ago, I don’t think it’s changed much…except perhaps for the worse. I built a fair number of projects for Popular Woodworking (and for myself) before I became editor. After I was promoted, I spent all my time in meetings or at my desk. Editing involves some creativity – but it’s not the same as designing and building a tangible thing. And I missed sharing my own tangible work with others. I shouldn’t have let the long hours and employee reviews stop me.
Now, I’m happy to be back in the shop – and happier still when there are six to 10 others in there learning alongside me. But I think Hayward was wrong in saying kids today aren’t interested. Or maybe that was true in 1942. Now, almost every class I teach has “kids” in it. But the point is to teach – to pass it on. Woodworking is an art, but it shouldn’t be a mystery.
— Fitz
We have often discussed here that aspect of modern industrial life which has tended to divorce the work of many men from anything that is intelligently creative, because so much is done by machinery. Compensation comes in the increase of leisure which this allows, a leisure that does at least give a man an opportunity of finding his own interests or hobbies. But at the same time have come the counter-attractions of cinema and radio, offering an easy way of entertainment without effort to a man who is tired after his day’s work. So that, in spite of the increase of opportunity, he has every inducement to allow himself to drift. The older man usually knows how to strike the balance. Things were not so easy when he was a boy, he had to learn to amuse himself, and he grew up with all sorts of hobbies and enthusiasms, and learned to be a handy sort of fellow. If he is, say, a keen woodworker, or a keen gardener, there are times when nothing will tempt him away from the job in hand.
***
But for the younger generation it is different. They were born into the state of affairs where entertainment, like everything else, was made easy. And some of our Youth Leaders are now finding it difficult to get boys really doing things—boys in their teens with no particular hobbies, no particular interests, who simply want to be entertained, and that at a time when a boy should be so full of interests that no day is long enough to cram them all in. “I do not complain of growing old,” says John Buchan, “but I like to keep my faith that at one stage in our mortal existence nothing is impossible.” We feel that that should be so in youth, and yet here is the problem in our midst. “It gives you absolutely nothing to work on,” said one of their Leaders to me recently, a man who numbers photography, book-binding, carpentry and music among his own hobbies, and does them all extremely well. “They’ve no conception of taking the initiative themselves or doing a spot of work for the pleasure of it.”
***
What are we going to do about it? The gospel of “work for the pleasure of it” isn’t an easy gospel to preach to the young. You have got somehow to kindle the spark of enthusiasm in their minds first, that enthusiasm which can make everything seem well worth doing, even the hard bits, for the sake of the end in view. And it is the enthusiasm of the Youth Leaders from which the boys have got to catch their own tiny spark which, once alight, may well kindle into a flame. And it will be worth it. For they can learn more from intelligently working at a hobby than from almost anything else. It develops patience, ingenuity, alertness, self-mastery, helps them to discover their own hidden powers, teaches them the satisfaction of a good job done, widens their knowledge in a thoroughly practical way.
***
But we have no business to leave it all to the Youth Leaders. There is no easy time ahead for the boys of this generation and it is every man’s job to lend a hand where he can. The best place is in the home. If you are a keen woodworker, then try to interest your boy as well. Don’t just hustle him out of the way because you are in the middle of a job and don’t want to be interrupted, or are afraid he will meddle with your tools. Teach him how to use them; help him with some little constructive job of his own, if it is only to make a “safe”—as a small boy of my acquaintance did recently—to keep his secrets in! Small boys are usually keen enough. It is the older ones who grow apathetic. And who knows if the blame can be put entirely on the pictures? Mayn’t it be that we have hustled them out of our way rather too often? Dared them to touch our tools when they were simply longing to try them? The impulse to do and to make things is there right enough. But these are days when it needs to be fostered.
I wish I were a better sawyer. Sometimes I wish I could pull off a nice French polish. But mostly, I wish I could stick to the script.
When I teach people how to make a chair, tool chest, workbench or anything, really, I find myself presenting it as a series of ritualistic steps. I do this, I suppose, because it’s how I approach many small tasks in the workshop.
If I follow every step to the letter, I end up with a beautiful furniture component. If I don’t, then it’s “Klaatu! Barada!… mumble mumble.” And the next thing you know the Army of the Dead shows up, and the project is hacked to pieces.
Sam Rami references aside, I am a strict ritualist when it comes to small tasks in the workshop. To me, they are not constricting. They are like singing old hymns in church. Everything you need for a transcendental experience is right there on the page. Just follow the notes.
When I glue up a chair, I have a ritual. Every part has been numbered in the same way since I built my first chair 17 years ago. Every leg points to its mortise. Every tool is laid out the same way since back when I barely had a beard.
When I assemble a dovetailed case, I have even more complex rituals for marking, clamping and checking for square.
(Side note: These rituals aren’t static. They are improved upon little by little until I get the same results every time. And I’m always open to altering them if I can find [and then test] a better way.)
These rituals didn’t come from a book. Or from a teacher. Instead, they came from grief after a failed operation. So I sat down and figured out what steps would prevent that failure from ever happening again. They are my own private religion.
And they sometimes put me in my own private hell. Today I was laminating some wide boards of Southern yellow pine face to face. I have a ritual for that, which I first created when I built my $175 Workbench in 2001.
There are many parts to this ritual (stand up, sit down, kiss yourself). But the most important parts are:
Clamp. Check both sides of the joint for gaps. Walk away for 5 minutes. Retighten the clamps all to the same pressure.
Let the assembly sit in the clamps for a minimum of five hours. Overnight is better.
Today as I removed the assembly from the clamps, I realized I had forgotten an important part of the ritual – checking both sides of the joint for gaps. I turned the component over, and it was a mess. I asked myself: Can I live with this?
And that triggered another ritual: “If I ask myself a question, then I already know the answer.”
I set the crap part aside to be salvaged in some way. And I went down to the basement to get more yellow pine.
Editor’s note: For the next several weeks, we will feature some of our favorite columns from “Honest Labour: The Charles H. Hayward” years, along with a few sentences about why these particular columns hit the mark.
If you know anything about me, my primary reason for selecting this 1937 column as a favorite will be readily apparent. But beyond the (perhaps) obvious, I find it’s important we be reminded from time to time to really look at what’s around us rather than just moving through it, and to be constantly learning.
— Fitz
Mind Upon Mind
“You can’t make bricks without straw” is an old adage which we have taken from the woes of the Israelites, groaning in bondage to the Egyptians. Every “maker” that is to say, every craftsman, artist, writer—learns it by sheer necessity. There is a material he needs just as much as the immediate timber or stone, paint and ink with which he works. It is a remoter thing which he has to glean from the world about him: ideas and knowledge garnered in to render the skill of his hands effective. It is no good being taught how to do a thing if he does not observe and extend his learning. A man may be taught how to make a perfect joint, but it takes knowledge and experience to learn when and where to use it; just as a man needs more than a technical knowledge of drawing and painting to become an artist, more than a knowledge of how to frame sentences to become a writer.
***
There is a commerce of ideas continually going on in the world. Nowadays beginners still have to learn the technique of their craft from older men, just as they did in the craft workshops of the past, and they learn by carrying out instructions as exactly as possible, copying their teachers as closely as possible. We are told by Vasari that, when Raphael was learning to paint in the workshop of Pietro Perugino, “he imitated him so exactly in everything that his portraits cannot be distinguished from those of his master, nor indeed can other things.” And later, when he had left the workshop and was working on his own in Florence, the centre of inspiration to all the great Renaissance painters, we still find him studying the works of other men. “This excellent artist studied the old paintings of Masaccio in Florence, and the works of Leonardo and Michelangelo which he saw induced him to study hard, and brought about an extraordinary improvement in his art and style.…It is well known that after his stay in Florence, Raphael greatly altered and improved his style, and he never reverted to his former manner, which looks like the work of a different and inferior hand.” So says Vasari, who was no mean judge.
***
The man who is going to be of any account will be the man who makes best use of his powers of observation to enlarge the equipment of his mind. As Professor Gilbert Murray says somewhere: “The great difference, intellectually speaking, between one man and another is simply the number of things they can see in a given cubic yard of world.” The other day I heard an intelligent youngster talking to another about some silver birch trees he had noticed down the road. “I didn’t see them,” his companion said. The first boy looked at him astonished. “D’you go about half dead?” he demanded. It is what we are all apt to do at times. We are occupied with our own thoughts and forget to look outside ourselves till very often necessity, which, like the Egyptians of old, is a stern taskmaster, forces us to it. For to the craftsman in any medium, ideas built upon observation of the work of other men as well as that of nature are a necessity, if they are to be creative workers in any sense of the word.
***
The influence of mind upon mind is extraordinary. In a law case lately in which a famous actress was involved the judge had once more to enunciate the old legal axiom that “there is no copyright in ideas.” Ideas are constantly being exchanged, seized upon and developed. They are the common currency of mankind, the means by which, consciously or unconsciously, we learn from one another. But to be of any value they have to be carefully submitted to the bar of our own judgment and reflected upon. Only by so doing can we extract the essential “straw” from them which will help us to make bricks of our own. The idea which is simply annexed becomes weakened in transit. But if it is absorbed, wrought upon by the individual mind, it gathers new elements. We can see the process at its best in Shakespeare—the man who took his plots from old plays and stories, and so wrought upon them with his mind that they became charged with greatness, suffering “a sea-change into something rich and strange.” A man who went about with open eyes and mind indeed for the passions and the foolishness of men, their dreams and futile longings, their littlenesses and greatnesses, observant of all the country sights and sounds which weave them-selves into the music of his verse: the “daffodils that come before the swallow dares, and take the winds of March with beauty.”
***
It may seem a far call from the ordinary man in a small workshop to Shakespeare. But the mystery of it is that the elements of the craft are the same, even though the results may be so different. Like Shakespeare we have to get our “straw” where we can find it, and the more we search for it the less likely are we to belong to the “half dead,” the men who neither see things nor do things but become as standardised as the window frames they put in houses. Shakespeare filled his mind with the rich material of the living world, pondered it and used it as the fuel of his genius. Raphael, for ever learning and studying even when he had fledged his wings, became one of the greatest masters of the Italian Renaissance. The quality of genius is not in every man, but there is a quality which is the very essence of himself, which is able to express itself in his work if he will give it the wherewithal to feed upon so that it may live. The trouble with us nowadays is that there is so much to distract us that we are apt to fritter our time away on nothing. But on the other hand we have opportunities for widening and enriching our knowledge with the old craftsmen might well have envied. And now that the holiday season is approaching, and those of us who would ordinarily be tied to office or workshop will be moving about the country more freely, we might well keep our eyes and ears open a little more. A friend who is a well-known artist once told me of a visit he had paid to Arundel Castle, talking in detail of the many beautiful pieces of furniture he had noticed on his way through the rooms. I, who had also visited Arundel Castle, remembered not a quarter of it, but I had such a lesson in observation from his eager descriptions that the next time I intend going with a pair of eyes in my head. For it is not only the looking but the way we look that counts.
Make a Tree from a Map: New York City (light) and Melbourne (dark).
Many a woodworker, no matter the season, can identify every tree in their yard and neighborhood. You recognize and value trees for the wood they provide for your shop and also their role in improving our environment. Part of the craft of woodworking is that many of will also be citizen scientists, both in your knowledge of, and protection of trees. Street (or public) tree maps are another resource to learn more about trees, enhance your enjoyment of your community and can be another sort of travel map.
Although most of the following maps are for large cities, there are many smaller cities that have tree maps and inventories and there are many more cities looking for volunteers to help map trees. Every map is a document to help educate the public about the benefit of trees in the community, how trees are cared for, why and how more trees will be planted and how the public will help.
How do these maps work?
This is the tree map for Singapore. After zooming in I selected a tree (blue arrow) to find out what it is.
This is the information about the tree I selected. It is a Jemerlang Laut known by several other names including the Yellow Flame. As you can see it is native to Singapore and is critically endangered. The pruning schedule is cut off, however, it is due for a “haircut” in the second quarter of 2020.
From the photo gallery you can see the leaves and flowers. These are some of the options to be found on street tree maps. Singapore’s map can be found here.
The sidebar on New York City’s map provides statistics, recent tree activity (pruning, litter clean-up, damage) and the ecological benefits of trees (water savings, energy savings). There are options to report problems and also plans for plantings and removals. This map also let’s you search for a specific location. New York City’s map can be found here.
One of the delights of opening a tree map is the color schemes you will encounter and Melbourne doesn’t disappoint. Part of Melbourne’s planting scheme involves identifying where the most vulnerable residents are, the tree canopy density is low and which streets are hottest in summer. Melbourne’s Urban Forest map can be found here.
What is all that pink on London’s map? Plane trees. London Plane trees. What is New York City’s most common tree? London Plane tree. The current map shows 700,000 trees, however, it is estimated there are over eight million trees in London. That is a lot of mapping still to do. You can find London’s map here.
As you zoom in and the color dots start getting a bit further apart it is easier to pinpoint an individual tree. The information boxes for each tree will vary. Amsterdam’s map provides a full plate of information including when the tree was planted. The planting date combined with the expected life span of tree species in the urban environment is used to plan for future replacement. For the ecologist it is a data point of use in studying a tree species in the complicated urban environment. Amsterdam’s tree map is here.
Montreal’s trees are plotted over a satellite image of the city (you can see your own street and house). In this screen shot the color legend really highlights how the same tree species was planted on long stretches of a street (this is not unique to Montreal). As the climates in our cities change what will be the effect on the lack of tree diversity on a particular street? This is another use for tree maps. You can find Montreal’s map here.
Some Special Features and Options
The next few examples have options that might not be available on all maps.
Vancouver allows the selection of four parameters (either individually or in combination) needed for studying trees: age, diameter, height and species. Wowee! In the above screen shot I selected one parameter: trees between 50 ft-100 ft in height.
In this second screen shot I selected trees with a diameter between 50 and 150 inches. Vancouver’s map can be found here.
Another set of trees you might find in a map are heritage trees. Seattle’s tree map includes heritage trees (in orange) and reminds the viewer the trees may be on private land, in a park or be a street tree. As this map notes, a heritage tree is “distinguished by botanical, historic or landmark significance such as size, age or uniqueness.” Seattle’s map can be found here.
This is a map of the flowering trees of Washington D.C. (provided by Casey Trees a non-profit group involved in restoring and protecting the tree canopy of the city). Peak cherry blossom time happens to right now (March 21-24). The map is for the 2019 season but should still be good. The flowering tree map can be found here.
I did not search every tree on every map so perhaps not all cities record stumps. St. Louis (birthplace of the founder of the blog) recorded tree stumps. I commend the thoroughness of the fine mappers of the Show Me State. The St. Louis map can be found here.
“On, Wisconsin!”
Wisconsin has a state tree map. When the map is opened find the community list, make your selection and it will take you there. The tree species list scrolls up and down to help the viewer identify the trees. The screen shows Green Bay. The Wisconsin map can be found here.
By the way, Wisconsin is the leading manufacturer of paper products in the United States. Paper products includes the very precious commodity we call toilet paper. Green Bay is the toilet paper capital of the world (should that be capitalized?). If a state can map all the trees in its communities I am confident they are running at full capacity to manufacture and supply all those in need of toilet paper in these very trying times. We will have our toilet paper and we will be OK.
Stuck at Home
Not everyone reading this blog can leave their homes unless it is to find and buy essential items. The luxury of a neighborhood stroll to find and identify your local trees is limited or not possible. Instead, zoom in and take a virtual walk or plan a walk in a city you want to visit in the future. Make a mini-map of your neighborhood or favorite park.
Michael Natale, resident of New York’s East Village, made this map over a period of 4 years. He photographed and gathered information on 550 trees. Your map doesn’t have to be this detailed.
Tree maps will go with me on future travels. In the interim the maps are providing some interesting patterns on paper. So, for now it is by hand and eye and origami.
Editor’s note: This is part of our series featuring some of our favorite columns from “
From the photo gallery you can see the leaves and flowers. These are some of the options to be found on street tree maps. Singapore’s map can be found 
Another set of trees you might find in a map are heritage trees. Seattle’s tree map includes heritage trees (in orange) and reminds the viewer the trees may be on private land, in a park or be a street tree. As this map notes, a heritage tree is “distinguished by botanical, historic or landmark significance such as size, age or uniqueness.” Seattle’s map can be found 
