Lost Art Press

Category: The Stick Chair Journal

A Lousy Way to Run a Railroad

Posted on by Lost Art Press

Publisher’s note: The following is the essay I wrote at the beginning of The Stick Chair Journal that explains what it’s about and what is coming in the future. This is the only excerpt we’ll be publishing on the blog.

The world does not need any more chairs. Or magazines, for that matter. And yet I am compelled to create both.

When I left my corporate publishing job in 2011, I was determined to stay away from magazine writing. And for years I turned down a half-dozen friendly offers from former competitors to write tool reviews, a column or long-form feature articles.

It turns out, however, that what I hated about corporate publishing was just the corporate part. The endless fleecing of customers (why does the cost of a yearly subscription go up for loyal subscribers?). The pressure to grow revenue 20 percent every year (without additional resources). The constant cheapening of the printed product (if there’s a thinner, crappier paper out there, they’ll find it and use it). The pandering to advertisers at the expense of the readers. The non-stop pressure to write articles for the lowest-common denominator.

It took me 11 years to recover from that toxic diet. Then one day while taking a shower I realized I could start a publication on my own terms. No advertising. Beautiful paper. No pressure for growth. And the magazine/journal/zine could be filled with the minutiae that I obsess about.

And that’s how The Stick Chair Journal was born.

What’s it about? Chairs that look like they are made from sticks. While the first issues will surely be about the chairs that I love and build, the world of “stick chairs” is much wider. I consider Windsor/Forest chairs to be stick chairs. In the hills of Kentucky, Tennessee and West Virginia, ladderbacks are often called stick chairs. All these chairs share one central feature: They are built from very slender, roundish components (sticks!) that are joined to create a lightweight and comfortable place to sit.

Unlike frame chairs, which are rooted in the cabinetmaking tradition of square mortises and tenons, stick chairs use different technology. The joints are circles instead of squares. And instead of deriving strength from bulk, stick chairs survive thanks to the exploitation of wood at the cellular level.

In each issue, we hope to highlight techniques that you might find helpful. Discuss tools that fly under the radar of mass-market magazines. Offer plans for one chair per issue that you are free to build for yourself and even sell to customers. And I want to explore the cultural aspects of stick chairs. What does that mean? Read “A Vampire Chair” in this issue for a taste.

I consider The Stick Chair Journal to be a supplement to “The Stick Chair Book.” That means that my plans use the techniques already discussed in that book. If you are an experienced chairmaker, you probably will be able to follow the plans here without any help. But if you are new to chairmaking, you might want to pick up a copy of “The Stick Chair Book” to get grounded in the basics first.

For future issues, we hope to convince other makers of stick chairs to share their methods and designs. But first, we have to get a few issues under our belts to establish a rhythm for the editing, production and printing of the Journal.

Oh, one more thing: We don’t plan to offer subscriptions. We don’t have the staff or infrastructure to manage a subscription/renewal database. In any case, most magazines are trying to trick you into renewing (sometimes for several years). And I don’t have the stomach for that game any more.

The Journal will be printed annually and will be released in the fall – stick chair season. If you want a copy, you’ll be able to buy it from Lost Art Press, plus (I hope) the outlets where we sell our books. Purchase only the issues you want. Skip the ones you don’t. If you don’t like an issue, send it back for a refund.

If all this sounds like a lousy way to run a railroad, you are probably right.

But let’s find out anyway.

P.S. We still have PLENTY of Stick Chair Merit Badges to give away. Here‘s how to get one!

Two Wests Inside Me

Posted on by Lost Art Press

My Grandma West spent a large part of her life observing my grandfather, Joe, and my uncle, Tom, at work – either on a house or in the shop. Both were skilled woodworkers, among other things, but each had a different way of looking at the craft.

“Joe could look at a staircase or some other project and knew exactly how everything should go together,” she told me once. “Tom could look at the same project and knew exactly how everything could go wrong.”

When the two worked together, it was a struggle at times.

Though my DNA doesn’t indicate it, I inherited exactly equal parts of Grandad and Uncle Tom. The Grandad chain of DNA is the “hell yes we can build this just let me get my toolbelt” polymer that puts my feet on the floor every morning at 6:30 a.m. The Uncle Tom part of the double helix is what makes me draw out every angled joint in full size to see how everything intersects before I’ll pick up a tool heavier than a pencil.

Most times, it’s a good combination of traits. Grandad offers the “go fever,” while Uncle Tom keeps me out of trouble.

But other days, I’m immobilized. I can see everything that might go wrong with an operation. But then I wonder: Can I really see *everything*? Could I be missing something obvious? And then I go back over all my drawings and the cutlist. Twice. Thanks, Uncle Tom.

Meanwhile, Grandad is tapping his foot. He would be done and onto the next task.

This week, both men are working in my shop. I had an oak seat to saddle, and it was a riddle. The seat is made up of two boards. On one of the boards, the grain is mild. On the other board, the grain has a wild grain reversal right at the seat’s pommel.

Is this a good thing? A bad thing? I draw it out and try to figure out how the scorp should move. But I don’t know what’s going on inside the glue joint between the two boards. So I set the seat aside to think about it some more. Perhaps I should cut the seat apart? Get a look at the grain inside? And then glue the boards back together?

Grandad rolls his eyes, and scrounges for a Pepperidge Farm Bordeaux cookie in the kitchen.

That’s when I know I need to listen to another deceased woodworker, Joseph Moxon.

“Therefore you muſt examine the Temper of your Stuff, by eaſy Trials, how the Plane will work upon it, and ſet your Iron accordingly,” Moxon wrote in his chapter on fore planes.

This is one of the most important sentences in Moxon. And I think about it every day: “Easy Trials.”

Of course. 

I step up to the chair’s seat with a scorp and take the lightest cuts possible across the grain of the seat at various angles. I remove about 1/64” of material with each pass, but I can clearly see a difference in how the wood cuts as I adjust the tool’s angle. 

It doesn’t look like I am accomplishing anything. But I am finding out everything that can go wrong. I adjust the tool and take off a 1/32” of material. Then I bear down harder and take 1/16”.

I find the rhythm that allows me to take heavier and heavier cuts. And I have a good roadmap of the work ahead thanks to my earlier “easy trials.”

And I am alone in the shop. With the work.

— Christopher Schwarz

Shipping Now: ‘The Stick Chair Journal’ & ‘The Belligerent Finisher’

Posted on by Lost Art Press

We have two new titles for sale today: “The Belligerent Finisher” by John Porritt and The Stick Chair Journal No. 1 . Both are available for immediate shipment.

“The Belligerent Finisher” is a hands-on, no-secrets finishing book that details how John Porritt adds years of age and patina to a piece. John is a life-long furniture restorer and chairmaker in Upstate New York. In his book he shows the simple processes and common chemicals he uses to make beautiful, tactile surfaces.

In my 24 years of working with woodworking authors, I have never met anyone as generous as John is with finishing information. Most professional finishers and restorers keep their techniques to themselves.

We are thrilled to offer this book – our first title devoted to finishing. 

The Stick Chair Journal No. 1 is a personal project. After 10 years of being out of the magazine business, I realized that I missed it. The Journal is the publication that I wished existed when I first became interested in chairmaking. It’s about techniques, tools and what we call “big thoughts” related to chairmaking. And there is a complete plan for a chair that you can build and even sell if you like.

Plus no ads. No “advertorials.” No sponsored “stories” masquerading as editorial.

Even the way we print the Journal is unlike any magazine I know of. Many magazines are bound by staples, called “saddle stitching”. Others are sheets of paper that are glued at the spine, called “perfect binding.” Both methods make an object that I consider temporary.

We print the Journal in signatures. Then sew and glue them together – just like our books.

The Journal is an annual publication – I’m already deep into working on issue No. 2.

Another difference: When you buy the printed Journal, you also get the pdf for free. Plus a download of the full-size patterns for the chair featured in that issue.

One last detail: We have printed 4,000 and will not reprint the issue. Once the printed copies are gone, they are gone for good. We are making this available to all our retailers worldwide. But it is up to them as to whether they carry it.

Diving back into the world of periodicals might be a financial mistake – but it makes me endlessly happy. So let’s see what happens.

— Christopher Schwarz

‘The Stick Chair Journal’ Woodcut

Posted on by fitz

Editor’s note: With the first Stick Chair Journal shipping out very soon, we wanted to highlight the woodcut on the cover. >>Stay tuned for a shipping date!<<

Making a Woodcut

When making a woodcut you need to make sure to remember two things:

  1. The printed image will be a mirror of the image you see on the block you are carving. 
  2. You have to remove the areas in the woodblock that will not be printed. 

In short, this means that the black lines you see on the finished image are the places you didn’t cut any wood away on the block. To make a woodcut, you have to think in the negative and in mirror.

Stick Chair Journal No. 1

I started this woodcut using a photograph of the beautiful chair featured in the Stick Chair Journal No. 1, made by Christopher Schwarz. 

I made some sketches to see how the print would look. For sketching, I recently started using black paper and white pens. In essence, this is exactly the process used in making a woodcut. 

Rough sketch – face on
Sketch face on with diagonal lines

I initially wanted to create a ‘grey’ background behind the chair, similar to my wood engraving of a Welsh Highback Chair but the diagonal lines proved to be too distracting for the cover. 

3/4 with diagonal lines

So we decided on a blank background instead, to really make the chair stand out. This woodcut also became the design of the Stick Chair Merit Badge.

A woodcut is a play between white and black lines (or, in the case of this cover, green ink and Kraft paper). Though I like seeing a silhouette of a chair, for my woodcuts I like to add some lines to it to mimic light.

I added white lines to the parts of the chair that would be illuminated from a light source coming from the right. Every stick therefore has a white line running from top to bottom.

Design drawn onto wood with pencil

With the design complete, I traced the outlines of the image onto the wood using carbon paper and a fine pencil. I used a piece of cherry wood that was more or less the correct dimensions for the cover.

As you can see, I didn’t mirror the design before carving it. So much for Rule #1.

Next was removing all the “white” in the image – all the parts that won’t receive ink. This is the most enjoyable part of making a woodcut. After all the planning has been completed, carving the design into the wood is a very pleasurable experience.

Carving the block
Nearly there

A first quick printing reveals any areas that were not completely cut away.

The first printing usually doesn’t look very good but it shows you where to remove more wood. And it looks like the chair is moving from right to left because of the cartoon-like lines on the right.

When there is a large white area present, ink sometimes ends up on the high spots that need to be cut away deeper.

The finished woodcut

I removed the high spots so they wouldn’t receive ink and cleaned up the rest of the chair. With the woodcut printed to my liking, I scanned it in so it could be used for the cover of The Stick Chair Journal.

The Journal will ship this week and I am very happy and proud that my woodcut adorns the cover.

— Rudy Everts, aka Underhatchet

Old Frontiers

Posted on by Lost Art Press

Editor’s note: Here’s another essay I wrote in support of my new “Build a Stick Chair” video. My plan was to record these essays and set them to music with some images. I tried it, and it  looked like the most boring slideshow with a narrator on quaaludes. So I present my script here, which you can read in your most excited voice (in your head).

“A Jet Workshop”

When I worked for a woodworking magazine, we had a formula for the sorts of projects we printed in its pages. We always had a certain number of Shaker pieces, a slightly smaller number of Arts & Crafts pieces, some “Country” pieces (whatever “country” is). Plus a handful of 18th-century pieces, mid-century modern pieces, workshop pieces, jigs and fixtures.

The formula was safe. It was based on the thousands of subscriber surveys we sent out year after year. And it worked.

But it was also boring.

Every inspiring Shaker piece has been published to death by every woodworking magazine on the continent. Ditto with Arts & Crafts. Yes, there is a lot of amazing material you could mine from the 18th-century. But a magazine can publish only so many 18th-century pieces before readers revolt (most of those pieces are challenging to build; magazine readers tend to be beginners).

I love these classic furniture styles. If you like the decorative arts, I am sure you do as well. But there’s not much left to explore.* And I have little interest in walking the same path that has been trodden for the last 50 years.

So – and I know you’re shocked to hear me say it – this is one of the great things about stick chairs, and vernacular furniture in general.

It is a field that is largely unexplored. There is no book on stools – one of the most common pieces of furniture on the planet. There are only a handful of books on vernacular chairs, chests, beds, tables and shelving. It’s like there’s a whole planet filled with furniture that has been almost completely ignored.

For the last 18 years, I have specialized in researching and building stick chairs, and I still feel like I’ve only scratched the surface of what’s out there. You can do it, too. How? Look at lots of old paintings. When I look at old paintings – a great source of information on early rural life – I ignore the people and focus on the furniture. 

When you do this, you will wonder why there has never been a book on settles. Gate-leg tables. Pig benches. Plus all the convertible furniture that was necessary for regular people to live in a small space – benches that converted into beds. Chests of drawers that also held chickens. Dry sinks that stored all manner of kitchen necessities.

The reason there are few books on this vernacular stuff is, of course, money.

Rich people don’t care about this stuff. That’s because your rich friends aren’t going to be impressed that you have a beat-up bacon settle in your boudoir. All the money for research, coffee-table books and museums goes to the high-style stuff because it was the stuff owned by the rich people in the past. 

Rich people loved it and desired it. So it must be important.

I’m not rich. And I’m guessing you aren’t either. So why don’t we explore *our* furniture past? The stuff that was made by the person who needed it. The stuff that wasn’t designed to impress the neighbors. The stuff that looks better the more it gets used.

It might be our furniture past. But with a little work it also might be our furniture present and our furniture future. 

— Christopher Schwarz

* There is some new ground to be explored. But alas, we have to twist Megan’s arm to make it happen.