Special offer: We are reducing the price of “The Essential Woodworker” by Robert Wearing to $23 – that’s the price we charged in 2010 when we released our version of this important hand-tool book. This special offer lasts until Christmas Day. After that, the book will return to its normal price of $33 (still a very good deal on a U.S.-made hardcover book with a sewn binding).
If you know someone who needs a little push into the hand-tool world, this is a great gift. “The Essential Woodworker” ties together all the little disparate hand-tool skills we pick up at the bench to show you how to make a table, a cabinet, a door or a dovetailed drawer.
Part of a recreated street of Ballycultra, the town area of of the Ulster Folk Museum.
With a trip to London planned, I decided to fly to the U.K. a few days early last month to visit Belfast in Northern Ireland to meet Heritage Carpenter Peter Sloan and Curator of History Fiona Byrne at the Ulster Folk Museum. They are working together to document and photograph all the many chairs and other seating in the museum’s collection, and kindly pulled some for me from storage so that I could take a closer look. Then Peter showed me around the open-air living history museum.
Located just outside of Belfast, the museum, which opened in 1964, is currently undergoing a £50 million “Reawakening Project.” It includes 60 historic buildings that have been moved to the site from across Ulster and reconstructed in town and country settings to allow visitors to experience life in the area in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Below are just some of the chairs that are currently in storage.
And here are some scenes from buildings in the living history museum:
And of course I found some cats, basking under a heat lamp in a hay-filled wooden wagon.
If you find yourself in Belfast or thereabouts, the Ulster Folk Museum is well worth a visit. And you might find Peter Sloan in the joiner’s shop, dressed in period clothing.
We know our books costs good money (we think they are worth it). But we’ve held prices at current levels for more than four years now. And today we are offering free shipping on all domestic orders for the month of November.
There is no code to copy. No special link or back-door access. Just free shipping on everything big and small in our online store.
Make sure to start with the dovetails at the top right, where they can’t be seen. (I like to get the bad ones out of my system first.)
As you might know, I’ve been renovating my kitchen since the day after Thanksgiving 2025, when I began tearing out the old cabinets and vinyl flooring. And just in time for Thanksgiving 2026, my kitchen is once again functional, with upper and lower cabinets done and installed (well, they still need doors and drawer fronts, but they’re functional), a soapstone countertop, and a working range, dishwasher and sink.
Now I’m on to the not-as-critical items, including this shallow shelving unit that lips over the backsplash and rests on the counter. There are cleats glued under the top and the fixed shelf, through which I’ve screwed the unit to studs.
Overall, the carcase is 25-1/4″ wide x 8″ deep x 80″ high, and the exterior pieces and fixed shelf are just under 3/4″ thick. I was aiming for 3/4″, but I had a bit more twist in one board than I’d realized, so I finished up a little shy of that goal – but no matter. The seven movable shelves and drawer dividers are 5/8″ because ~3/4″ looked a little too inelegant to my eye (and the Sagulator deemed them “acceptable”). And of course, it’s all cherry.
The back is rabbeted to accept a 1/4″ plywood back that I covered with William Morris and Kate Faulkner “Mallow” pre-pasted wallpaper (just add water and a squeegee) before screwing it in place – an idea I borrowed from a number of British kitchen design feeds (this one is a favorite).
The build is fairly straightforward. The corners are dovetailed, and there’s a fixed shelf in the center to keep it from racking, plus two drawers dividers, captured in 1/4″-deep dados … that I decided to add mid-build.
Watch out – long dovetails coming through.
As usual, I didn’t do a full dry-fit – just started the joints to test the fit. If the tails are cut straight across and the pins are straight up and down – and there’s no waste left poking above the baseline and in the corners – the joints will go fully together. No need to smack them home until there’s glue involved.
What made the build a little tricky is the size. I had to saw the tails on the 80″-long sides with the board flat on a low bench which, while not difficult per se, takes some getting used to given that it’s a rare need. And the transfer required a bit of extra room, plus it was a little fiddly to ensure that everything was lined up square.
After cutting the backsplash notch (pictured above) and semi-dry-fitting the dovetails, I laid out and cut the 1/4″-deep dados with a crosscut saw, chisel and router plane. Then grabbed a bottle of fish glue for assembly. (I needed the long open time to get from one end to the other of this behemoth!)
The bottom-front joint was on the fine edge of too tight. I had to grab one of our hefty Hargrave clamps to pop it fully home. But whew – no split!
Once the glue was dry and everything was out of clamps, I used a shelf-hole jig to drill the support holes for the movable shelves. Then I had to go back to our favorite local(ish) lumberyard, because all the cherry I have left in my stash is 11″ or wider, and I certainly wasn’t about to cut that down for 7-7/8″-wide shelves!
Had I planned those drawers from the beginning, I’d have centered that fixed shelf in the open area rather than in the overall carcase. Ah, well. You can’t really tell once the shelves are in place and stocked with mugs, glasses and julep cups.
The drawers are per usual: half-blind dovetails on the 5/8″-thick cherry front, and through-dovetails at the back. The secondary wood is 1/2″-thick poplar, the bottoms are 1/4″ plywood captured in grooves in the fronts and sides, and kept from sliding out the back with a nail in a slot. The bottom drawer is shallower front to back by 1-1/2″ because of the backsplash, but both are large enough to hold boxes of tea. The 7/8″ tenoned Shaker pulls are from Nice Knobs.
The pulls are simply glued in place in matching mortises; I didn’t feel wedging the backs was needed for such light duty.
The finish is soft wax. And on the bottom, I applied some black adhesive-backed felt so as not to scratch my countertop as I slid it in place.
Now it’s on to designing and building a long, narrow island – more of an ait, really (in sticking with the British theme).
– Fitz
p.s. At the risk of self-aggrandizement/looking like a prat…if you’d like thorough instruction on through-dovetails and dados, you’ll find it in “Dutch Tool Chests.”
p.p.s. You might be wondering how I can possibly access the stuff at the top. After I’m done with the island, and the cabinet doors and drawer fronts, I’m installing a ladder rail on that wide panel between the upper and lower upper cabinets, then building a ladder that will hook over it. Stole Borrowed that from a British site, too…and ordered the hardware from the U.K. where it’s a lot easier to find.
This week we have two pieces we are selling to readers: a Welsh-style stick chair I made last month, plus a gorgeous walnut shelving unit that journeyer Kale Vogt made for a pottery show. These items are being sold separately via a random drawing. Complete information on buying the items is below.
First, a little about the objects.
Elm & Ash Stick Chairby Christopher Schwarz
I recently completed this chair while teaching a class in Wisconsin. It is the seven-stick comb-back I’ve been refining for about five years now. This one is set up for all-purpose seating, either for dining, keyboarding or sitting by the fire.
Like many old Welsh chairs, this one has an elm seat, arm and comb. The legs, sticks and stretchers are made from some nice olive ash. All the joints are assembled with animal glue (for repairs in the far-off future) and ash wedges (to keep the joints tight). The chair is finished with a coat of the soft wax we make here. It is non-toxic and easy to repair should it ever become scuffed.
Design-wise, this chair has a lot of Welsh features, including the negative space between the short sticks and the long, the hand-cut lamb’s tongue detail on the ends of the shoe and the gently rounded comb. I have left the short sticks a little proud (1mm) and burnished them with bone, which gives the arms some nice texture.
The seat is lightly saddled (about 3/8″ deep) and is 16-3/4″ from the floor – a good all-purpose height for vernacular chairs. It sits well, with just a little bit of lumbar support and nice thoracic support.
The chair is $1,900, and that price includes crating it and shipping it to anywhere in the lower 48.
Walnut Shelf Unit by Kale Vogt
If you follow the ‘Anarchist’s Apprentice’ Substack then you’re well aware of this shelf. On Substack I wrote about the design and build process of this shelf, and now here on the Lost Art Press blog, I’m putting it up for grabs.
This wall shelf was initially built for my friend who is a ceramicist. Months ago, said friend reached out to see if I’d be interested in building an original piece for his upcoming ceramic show that could display his handmade mugs. I jumped at the opportunity.
The ceramic show has since come and gone (it was a big success!), and now here my shelf sits, alone, ready for its new home. If this sort of thing speaks to you, read on for specs and details about the shelf.
For starters, the shelf is made entirely from a walnut tree that fell on my family’s land in Eastern Kentucky. It’s adhered together using traditional through-tenon and key joinery. No glue or fasteners are used on the piece (Except for the screws used to attach the French cleat to the back.)
The inner shelves are egg-carton jointed and rest snugly inside the outer frame. And the rabbeted back panel is held in place by grooves on the upper and lower frame shelves. Each cubby hole measures 5-1/2″ W x 4-3/8″ D x 5-1/2″ H. The shelf as a whole measures 19-3/4″ x 8-1/2″ (at the widest portion of the side panel) x 32-1/2″. And as mentioned before, it comes ready to hang with a cleat attached to the back. The piece is finished with a coat of soft wax.
If I had an appropriate spot for this shelf in my kitchen, I’d be keeping it for myself. It’s sturdy, bold and walnut. Did I note earlier that it’s made from walnut?
I’m asking $675 for the shelf, that price includes crating and shipping to anywhere in the lower 48.
How to Purchase One of These Pieces
We are selling these pieces via a random drawing. If you want to purchase one of them, send an email to [email protected] before 3 p.m. (Eastern) on Thursday, Oct. 15. If you want to buy the stick chair, please use the subject line “stick chair.” And if you want to buy the shelving unit, use the subject line “shelving unit.” In your email, please include:
• Your first and last name • Your mailing address • Your daytime phone number (this is for the shipping quote only. No one will call).
If your name is selected, we’ll send you an email and arrange delivery. As mentioned above the price includes all packing and shipping charges.
