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A Visit to Keim Lumber in Amish Country

Posted on by Lost Art Press

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For me, woodworking tourism is the best kind of tourism, though I resist dragging my family along when I go to lumberyards, museum exhibits or auctions. I want them to remember me fondly when I’m dead.

Luckily, these days I have Brendan Gaffney working alongside me in the shop, and he’s always up for a ridiculous day trip. This week we went to Amish country in north-central Ohio to visit a tool store, some lumberyards and – most importantly – Keim Lumber.

Keim is about a three-hour drive from Cincinnati, so it’s a bit of a stretch to shop there regularly. But I’ve heard so much about the place during my life here that I had to visit it. What is Keim? It’s a lumberyard and home center that caters to the furniture maker and high-end carpenter.

The lumber section, for example, is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. Keim stocks both domestic and exotic species that you’d be hard-pressed to find, such as Tree of Heaven, Osage Orange, Butternut, Sassafras and a couple dozen others. On the exotic side, the stock was equally amazing. I’m not into exotics, however, so I didn’t retain a lot of the species names (you can browse the inventory here).

What is equally impressive is how the lumber is presented. Every board is beautifully planed with no tear-out and then drum-sanded. Yup, drum sanded.

The tool section is equally impressive, though it is geared to professional furniture makers with production equipment. Keim carries several lines of machines, such as SawStop, Jet and Rikon. But where the store really shines is in all the shop supplies and accessories. They have every sawblade imaginable, an entire aisle of sanding supplies and deep inventory on handheld electric tools. Plus they do repairs.

There’s an impressive section of hardware, though most of it is geared to the production woodworker (though they had Acorn strap hinges). Plus a huge section for finishing (5-gallon buckets of boiled linseed oil).

And there were entire sections of the store we didn’t explore, such as the custom millwork area.

Oh, and the prices were considerably lower than in the city.

If you are ever passing near Charm, Ohio, I highly recommend a visit to Keim. We’re already planning a return trip to the area to visit some additional lumberyards in the area.

— Christopher Schwarz

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The employee parking lot. As many of the employees are Amish, there are more bikes out back than cars.

Zierschrot

Posted on by saucyindexer

The general miserableness of August has been bearing down on me this month. Heat, humidity, everything in the newspapers and mosquitoes have driven me to stay inside. There is a stack of favorite books to reread and stacks more of new books. On the woodworking side, I’ve been dipping into Klaus Zwerger’s ‘Wood and Wood Joints-Building Traditions in Europe, Japan and China’ (available in German or English).

In a section discussing wood joints and aesthetic values he shows how the accomplished woodworker takes a functional element and adds ornamentation as a further display of skill. The log ends for exterior walls and interior partition walls of traditional log buildings offered the woodworkers a canvas for shaping and carving (or in Zwerger’s opinion some craziness). And so, we have the delightful Zierschrot (and Figurenschrot) found in the log buildings of Bavaria and parts of Austria.

The stag in the photo above (from Zwerger’s book) is a masterpiece on a partition wall. The body of the stag is the log end and the head, legs and tail are added inlay. Above and below the stag are the edges of other traditional shapes.

Here are some of some of the more common Zierschrot shapes:

This home has a full complement of traditional Zierschrot shapes.

One more example of the more common shapes.

There is no standard to follow for what combination of shapes to use, or a particular sequence. The same uniform shape was repeated, or the craftsman could produce a highly personal set of figures.The church was a very common shape for the log ends of partition walls.

The church could also be found on the wood joints of an exterior wall.

Zierschrot is not a lost art. This photo is from an Austrian site from about six years ago.

Another common shape seen in the log ends of partion walls is the cat and this one has a painted face (from Zwerger’s book).

Enjoy your Saturday, Samstag or Caturday, as the case may be.

–Suzanne Ellison

Dictum: The New Woodworking Mecca

Posted on by Lost Art Press

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After almost three decades of woodworking and writing about woodworking (and its occasional excesses), I am not easy to impress. I’ve been to all the big woodworking shows (including IWF and AWFS multiple times). And I’ve been to factories and stores all over the world.

But Dictum’s new headquarters in Plattling left me fairly speechless.

I have worked as an instructor for Dictum for many years and continue to work for the company because it it is on the same ethical wavelength as I am. Dictum takes a long view with its business practices, in everything from the way it treats it employees, to the fixtures it chooses for its bathrooms.

So yes, I am biased. I am a huge fan of the company and its employees.

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This summer I got to visit the company’s new headquarters building after wrapping up a long day of teaching a workbench class. I can honestly say I’ve never seen a woodworking facility like this. Though I’ve never visited Google, Apple or Facebook headquarters, I imagine they might be something like this.

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Everything is modern, open, airy and friendly. All the tools are hanging on the walls and can be taken down for inspection or use. The showroom is (easily) as twice as large as Highland Woodworking, the largest woodworking store I’ve ever visited.

There are separate areas for the knives, the leatherworking tools, the woodworking hand tools and the machinery. And there is a large section of Filson workwear – a bit of a surprise but not really.

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After an hour in the showroom one of the employees took us of a tour of the warehouse and offices. I have never seen a cleaner or more efficient shipping operation (and I’ve seen a lot). And the offices and public employee areas made me re-think being self-employed (only a bit).

So if you are in southern Germany, a visit to Dictum is definitely worth the effort, whether it’s the company’s headquarters in Plattling or the store and school in Munich (which is where I’m teaching this fall).

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One more thing: If you’ve been reading this blog for longer than 5 minutes then you know this isn’t a sponsored post. Dictum didn’t give me any tools for free. They worked me like a dog and paid me a fair wage.

— Christopher Schwarz

Union: The Lost Shaker Village

Posted on by Lost Art Press

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The two closest Shaker communities to Cincinnati are also the most difficult to see.

The White Water Shaker Village isn’t open to the public on a regular basis, though there is a dedicated group of people trying to change that. And Union Village – the largest Western Shaker community – has all but been erased.

marble_0_0The only structure that remains (that I know of) is now the marketing office for the Otterbein Senior Life retirement home (see photo at right).

Union Village, about 30 miles northeast of Cincinnati, was once a bustling area of commerce. The Shakers there sold seeds and brooms and were an important part of the abolitionist activity in the area before the Civil War.

While the village is gone, some of its furniture was saved.

On Saturday, I took Welsh chairmaker Chris Williams and Megan Fitzpatrick to Harmon Museum in Lebanon, Ohio. This charming and tidy museum doesn’t attract lots of tourists, but it has an impressive collection of Shaker furniture and objects that were rescued from Union Village.

Many of the pieces display the characteristics of typical Ohio-made pieces, including the table legs that are turned and taper at the floor. Some of the chairs and rockers in the collection were downright astonishing, and I wonder where they were made. And there were some impressive casework pieces, including secretaries and built-ins.

If you find yourself in the area, I recommend a stop. It’s a few minutes off Interstate 71. In the meantime, here are some photos of a few of the pieces that caught my eye.

— Christopher Schwarz

 

From the Ground Up

Posted on by Lost Art Press

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I was in elementary school when my father hurt his back so badly while working on the farm that his doctor confined him to bed.

My bedroom was immediately down the hall from my parents’, and after school one day I heard disturbing noises – violent banging and rasping – coming from their room. Their door was open a crack, and as I gently pushed my way in, I was surprised, relieved and completely enlightened about my own nature.

My father was lying flat in bed, as per the doctor’s orders. And he was building a small side table in this odd position, without a workbench or his machinery. (In fact, during this convalescence, he completely finished the table, which I still own. He painted a flower on each end and varnished the entire thing. All while on his back.)

Likewise, I’ve never been able to sit still. My dad once offered to give me $5 if I could remain motionless for five minutes. I have never collected on that bet. But after seeing him build a table in bed, at least I know – genetically – where I get my peculiar work habits.

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My father, a doctor in a field hospital in Vietnam, administering an immunization.

My father’s urge to create was unstoppable. He transformed our house in Fort Smith, Ark., into a delightful English/Japanese garden, learning masonry, fence-building and landscaping on the way. He built a goldfish pond, tended a bamboo garden and installed dramatic lighting. All of this fueled by a remarkable eye for design and unspeakable energy.

When our house in town was perfect, he bought 84 acres outside Hackett, Ark., and proceeded to transform that with his hands and a vision. He bought a drafting table, read a bunch of books and took a class at the Shelter Institute in Maine with my mom. And then bang, we were building the first of two houses without the help of electricity or running water.

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He plowed the bottomland and planted strawberries. Then he constructed a second house of his own design that was about 4,000 square feet. We were going to move there as soon as it was complete. I was promised a herd of goats. (Which I have never collected on.) And chickens.

I left for college in 1986, my parents divorced in 1989 and my dad lost heart in the farm.

This man who shaped an Arkansas wilderness of turkeys, rocky soil and armadillos was confined to a tiny apartment in one of those complexes that has a “singles nights” and keno. I thought my dad was done for and was broken in spirit. But I was wrong.

He bought a run-down farmhouse in town and transformed it into another gorgeous estate with a lap pool, workshop and guest cottage. No detail in his house was too small – he hand carved the heating registers with a geometric design I’ve never seen before. He built garden furniture that was so cunningly simple and beautiful that I blatantly ripped it off as a furniture maker. His kitchen was like something in Architectural Digest.

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Meanwhile the farm sat dormant and unfinished. We’d go down there to fix walls or hang a new gate, but every visit was depressing.

During one visit, my father told me that the urge to create things every day had vanished. In some ways it seemed a relief to him. He didn’t have to judge himself on his daily labor. He began to take a deeper interest in music and singing (and piano and later cello).

Again, I thought he had reached the end of his creative life. Again, I was wrong.

He sold the farm and bought an old house in the historic district of Charleston, S.C. And again, he set to work rebuilding the garage, workshop and guest cottage. He transformed the interior of the house, and once more he created a perfect human terrarium where he was surrounded by beautiful objects he had collected or made during his entire life, from his time during the Vietnam war to multiple trips to Europe and Mexico.

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And here he lies tonight. Flat on his back and dying from cancer he was diagnosed with in 2003. He’s leaving us far too early.

This time, he doesn’t have the parts or tools to build another side table. This time I’m sure we’re at the end.

Or are we?

Without my father’s example, his unstoppable work ethic and his eye for beautiful objects, I’d be a sorry woodworker. Luckily, I grew up in a house where we unapologetically made things. And when dad found beautiful objects made by others, he bought them. He sat them next to his own work and saw how his measured up. Or if it didn’t. And when the next day came, he kept building.

That’s where I come from. I might tell people I come from Arkansas (where I grew up) or Missouri (where I was born). But I really come from a home where our job is to make the world a little more beautiful each day.

And when he leaves us, which could be any minute now, the world is going to be a little less beautiful without him.

— Christopher Schwarz