Scholarship applications are now open for six spots in a special comb-back class in our Covington, Kentucky, workshop Sept. 15-19. The class is offered through The Chairmaker’s Toolbox, a non-profit organization that provides education and support to those who have been historically excluded from the craft.
The six students will spend five days building and finishing a vernacular comb-back chair using lots of hand tools and occasionally the band saw. The scholarship covers full tuition, all materials, and breakfasts and lunches during the week. (Housing and transportation are the responsibility of the student.)
Full details and the application are here. The deadline to apply is July 6, 2025. People of all skill levels are encouraged to apply.
This is the fourth year I have taught this class, and it’s one of the highlights of my year. The classes are intense, but they’re filled with good food, camaraderie and the occasional moonwalking lesson.
The “goose girl” statue in our Main Strasse neighborhood.
Our workshop is in the inner city in an old German neighborhood. The shop is an 1890s German barroom. As a result, you don’t really need a car once you get here. You can walk anywhere you want to go (including Cincinnati, which is right over the Roebling Suspension Bridge). Covington itself is a diverse, open and accepting community.
A lot of students come here with odd ideas about Kentucky (Will there be plumbing? Will people be riding horses?) I guess you’ll have to come find out for yourself.
You don’t need all the tools to take the class – some students show up with just a tape measure and a lot of enthusiasm. And that’s more than enough. We have plenty of chairmaking and general woodworking tools here we can loan you.
If you aren’t going to apply for the scholarship, please consider passing along this information to someone you know who might be interested.
The following is excerpted from “The Essential Woodworker,” by Robert Wearing. In our opinion, “The Essential Woodworker” is one of the best books on hand-tool usage written in the post-Charles Hayward era. Wearing was classically trained in England as a woodworker and embraced both power and hand tools in his shop and in his teaching. The book is filled with more than 500 hand-drawn illustrations by Wearing that explain every operation in a hand-tool shop. His illustrations are properly drafted, drawn in perspective and masterfully clear.
Design brief: Before commencing on any design other than a copy a design brief must be prepared. A design brief is a collection of all the data relevant to the construction and use of the article and the design is based on this information. The brief can best be produced by writing down as many questions as possible about the job, and then by experiment, research, measurement or judgment, find the answers to these questions. For example, questions about a coffee table might include the following:
Where will it be used? Who will use it? How many people will use it? What will it carry? How will people sit at it? What will be its top shape? How high will it be? What will be its basic constructional form? What will be the finish? What wood is preferred or is available? Will the top have any special finish? Will a shelf or rack be required?
Design sketch The answers to these practical questions will give the worker the length, the width and the height required. From these three figures a number of design sketches may be produced and the best one selected (Fig 90, for example).
Working drawing From the design sketch it will now be possible to build up a working drawing. For items of coffee-table size a full-sized drawing is an advantage; larger items must of course be drawn to scale. These full-sized drawings can be drawn on decorator’s ‘lining’ (ceiling) paper. Before making a start the following table of ‘finished sizes’ should be consulted (Fig 91).
The sawn sizes are those used by the timber yards when sawing logs into boards. The finished sizes are those to which the sawn boards can be planed, either by hand or by machine. This figure is both the maximum which can be obtained from the sawn board and also the size marketed as a planed board. In planning component sizes these sizes should be kept in mind in order to use wood with the greatest economy. A reduction of thickness of 1mm (1/16in.) may afford a considerable cost saving.
The working drawing (side view) (Fig 92) is built up as follows. Draw the ground line (A) then draw the top of the table (B). Consult the finished sizes and draw in the top thickness (C). Mark this off to length (D). Consider the overhang and draw in the outside edge of the legs (E). Consult the finished sizes again and draw in the leg thickness (F). The top rail (G) is drawn in next, wide enough to give a good joint but not wastefully wide. This can be made narrower if the extra support of a stretcher rail is given. The end (width) view can be similarly drawn. To save space this can be superimposed on the front view (shaded area). When a proper mortice and tenon construction is to be used (as in this example) the length of the tenon must now be ascertained. This is easily done (Fig 93) by making a full-sized drawing on graph paper. Finally the inside edges of the legs can be tapered below the joint. This design retains the simplicity of an all-right-angle construction.
To obviate frequent reference to a drawing in the early stages it is convenient to produce a cutting list (Fig 94) and to work solely from this in the early stages.
Finished (i.e. final) sizes are used in the list, which avoids allowances being added at several stages in the work. Unfortunately, although there are only three dimensions there are many more names for them, e.g. length, height, width, depth, broad, thick, and so on. The three to be used are length (the distance along the grain), thickness (the smallest dimension) and width (the intermediate size). Width and thickness are often the same size.
To avoid confusion components are often lettered, as in the first column. The remaining columns are self-explanatory except for the blank one. A tick here signifies that the component has been sawn out. A cross tells that the piece has been produced to size and is ready for marking out.
A couple weeks ago, one of our warehouse’s dehumidifiers lost power and dripped water onto a pallet of “Ingenious Mechanicks” books. We dried them out, but a couple hundred of them suffered some water spotting on the back covers and have pages that are a little wavy from the moisture (the waviness will likely disappear over time). See the photos below for examples of the spotting.
We cannot sell these as new, so we are selling them at a discount. The water-spotted books are $26 (that’s $18 off the regular $44 price). All sales are final on this special offer.
Editor’s note: Our Mind Upon Mind series is a nod to a 1937 Chips from the Chisel column (also featured in “Honest Labour: The Charles H. Hayward Years”), in which Hayward wrote, “The influence of mind upon mind is extraordinary.” The idea being there’s often room for improvement. (You can read the entire Chips from the Chisel column here.)
To that end, we’ve asked you what else you have thought of, tried out and improved upon after building projects from our books. We’ve loved reading all your submissions!
Today’s pick is from Matt Williamson.
I have been messing around with “The Anarchist’s Design Book” and have made a few adjustments that you might find interesting. These are probably not improvements so much as solving problems caused by my desire to use what I have in lieu of greenwood I have yet to source.
For the staked stool, the seat is from a 13-1/2”-wide 9/4 pine joist I pulled from dumpster when a historical building in the neighborhood got rehabbed. For the staked chair, the hardwood I had included some 4/4 red oak and some 6/4 red oak that, again, I dumpster dove for in the neighborhood. These 6/4 scraps were not big enough to make a seat, but I thought they would add strength to the 4/4 seat panel and give the legs something to hold onto. It is a bit heavy.
I did not have any greenwood that could be bent for the staked stool back so I used a piece of apple wood from a tree I cut in the fall that basically followed the 12″ curve. I kind of liked it and found another piece to use when I made the staked chair a little while later.
Did you change up one of our projects or do you have a clever idea for an improvement? Email kara@lostartpress.com. You can read more about the submission process here.
The division of the periods from 1500 to 1800 into the ages of the Carpenter, Cabinet Maker, and Designer is convenient because these terms suggest the type of furniture being produced. In the earliest period furniture was made by the carpenter, who regarded furniture-making as incidental to his general work, and it therefore bore the characteristics of a craftsman used to large joinery work. Soon after 1660 some woodworkers began to specialise in furniture, and so came the age of the cabinet maker. Lastly, at about the middle of the eighteenth century, furniture began to be associated with the names of the individual designers and craftsmen, hence the term Age of the Designer.
