If you are in the market for live-edge slabs that are dry and ready to go, read on.
The tree service I use outside Cincinnati has seven beautiful walnut slabs available that they have cut, dried in a vacuum kiln and are stacked and ready to go. I got to inspect the slabs last week during a visit and they are sweet. I didn’t have my moisture meter with me, but they felt dry and ready to use.
Here are some details:
They have two slabs that measure 3” thick and 12’2” long. These are 45” wide (!!) at the crotch end and 27” to 34” wide on the bole.
They have four slabs that measure 3” thick and 12’2” long. These are 47” wide at the crotch end and 34” wide on the bole.
They have one slab with bark on one face that is 136” long at the crotch end and 20” at the bole end. The thickness varies because of the bark surface, but the middle bit is almost 6” thick.
I’m listing these here as a favor to the seller and you. I don’t get a commission and have no interest in the deal.
This was one impressive walnut tree, and I’m happy these guys were able to save it from the chipper so it can live on.
For information on pricing and availability, contact Jay Butcher at 513-616-8873 (voice or text) or via email.
James McConnell, of The Daily Skep, will teach a weekend class on making a fore plane July 21-22 at the storefront in Covington, Ky. Registration opens at 9 a.m. Monday, Feb. 12.
Just like the other classes at Lost Art Press, it is limited to six students, and proceeds go directly to the instructor; they are not a money-making enterprise for Christopher Schwarz or Lost Art Press. He’s let those of us who are teaching use the space for free (he’ll likely edit this out, but: Chris is incredibly generous and kind) as a way to help build and get the word out on the local woodworking community in Covington. (And to help feed the cats/children/chameleons of the instructors.)
Here are the details:
Build a Traditionally Styled Laminated Fore Plane with James McConnell July 21-22, 2018 Cost: $250, plus a $115 materials fee for the wood & iron
Build your own a traditionally styled wooden fore plane in a weekend with Jim McConnell. Using simple laminated construction, this wedge-and-pin-style plane works, looks and feels like a traditional fore plane, but it requires no specialized planemaking tools. This is a great way to get into the world of wooden handplanes – and the skills you learn in this class can be applied across the board to build planes of other sizes as well. We’ll focus on getting the bed angles right and fitting each plane to the user, so the plane you take home will be as individual as you are.
The Lost Art Press storefront in Covington, Ky., will be open this Saturday with lots of interesting stuff to try and to see. Here’s what you’ll find if you pay us a visit.
An authentic Douro chair. I’m studying this chair and its transit case for an upcoming commission. This chair is great fun. It fits inside its case. The case turns into a side table.
Lots of blemished books for 50 percent off retail. (Cash only, on these, please.) I’m picking up a sizable load of returned orders and books with dinged corners from our warehouse for the Saturday event.
Megan Fitzpatrick is finishing up a Dutch tool chest.
Brendan Gaffney is building a beguiling bookcase using persimmon panels that use “recording.”
The Electric Horse Garage is complete. We have HVAC, electricity, machines and no leaks. Our machine room is simple, but if you saw what we started with in September you might be impressed.
If you are looking for other fun stuff to do in the area this weekend.
Go on a tour of the New Riff Distillery (in Newport next door to Covington). It’s a gorgeous facility. Plus you should stop at Braxton Labs, next door to the distillery, and try some of the unusual beers they are cooking up.
Get a cinnamon roll or brioche tart at Brown Bear Bakery in Over the Rhine, my new obsession.
Lil’s Bagels (the best bagels I’ve had outside New York) have opened a window on Greenup Street in Covington. Get there early because they sell out almost every day.
Lee Carmichael of Chattanooga, Tenn., sent me a link to a video yesterday. Lee purchased the Hancock Candle Stand video I did last year and has built several of these tables since.
Lee has been woodworking as a hobby for the past fives years with the goal of building all of the furniture in his home. He and a friend made a short video of one of his table builds; it’s way cool.
For many years, I have been an undying fan of the work of Chester Cornett (1913-1981), a traditional Eastern Kentucky chairmaker who crossed over to become an artist who lived out his last years in Cincinnati, just a few miles from where I am right now.
Cornett’s story is long, tragic and documented in the book “Craftsman of the Cumberlands” (University Press of Kentucky) by Michael Owen Jones. My personal copy of the book is dog-eared and always within grasp.
For years I’ve known that the Kentucky Folk Art Center in Morehead, Ky., had some of Cornett’s work, which it acquired for an exhibition and its permanent collection. But despite my long love of folk art and woodworking, I’d never made it down to the Folk Art Center until Wednesday.
It was a bittersweet journey.
Kentucky’s state budget is in turmoil. And though I try to steer clear of politics, I am deeply saddened and angered at our governor’s proposed budget cuts, which would shutter both the Kentucky Folk Art Center and the University Press of Kentucky, which published the book on Cornett. (And has a 75-year history of publishing fantastic books about the Commonwealth.)
If you dislike funding for cultural institutions, don’t bother leaving a comment. I don’t want to hear it. We’re talking about pennies.
Anyway, we arrived at the Kentucky Folk Art Center on Wednesday and spent a couple hours with the director, Matt Collingsworth. We arrived unannounced and unheralded. But Collingsworth enthusiastically gave us full access to all the pieces and all the paperwork the museum owns on Cornett – including the only known drawings and descriptions Cornett made of his pieces.
Side note: Some of you know that I have been collecting folk art/outsider art for as long as I have been a woodworker. My home is full of it. The Kentucky Folk Art Center is – hands down – the best folk art museum I’ve ever visited. (Yes, I spent a day at the American Folk Art Museum in New York. I went to the Garden of Earthly Delights in Georgia while Howard Finster was still alive. I’ve been to every folk art museum in every town I’ve ever visited.)
In fact, when I arrived home on Wednesday night I spent the next hour showing my family all the photos from my trip, and I cannot wait to take them there as soon as possible.
OK, back to the woodworking.
The Kentucky Folk Art Center has three of Cornett’s pieces on display: an early side chair that resembles a heavier version of Jennie Alexander’s chair from “Make a Chair from a Tree” (Taunton). There’s a standard rocking chair that looked to be a “sample” chair because the slats were scrawled with Cornett’s sales pitch on the slats.
And there was one of Cornett’s “chair-and-a-half” rockers in walnut, ash and hickory bark. This chair, which Cornett also called his “fat man’s rocker,” was stunning. Octagonal seat. Four rockers. An astounding amount of drawknife work. Pictures do not do the piece justice.
Brendan Gaffney and I were stunned by it. Brendan took lots of measurements and vowed to produce a version of it. I tried to capture its essence in photos (and failed).
We also got to see one of Cornett’s tables, which is eight-sided and has octagonal legs with a most unusual taper. And the table broke down into two pieces.
As I made the drive back home up the AA highway, my head spun with the joy of seeing Cornett’s pieces (and getting to sit in one of his rockers) and the foreboding feeling that I wasn’t going to be able to make many more of these visits in the future.
If you have a free weekend, please make the trip to the Kentucky Folk Art Center, which is deep in the hills of Eastern Kentucky, before the axe falls. And know that we’ll do our best to keep writing about Chester Cornett and his unusual and incredibly well-made chairs.
