We don’t know much about David Denning except that he wrote four books about woodworking in the late 19th century, was traditionally trained and had strong opinions about the craft. After reading his 1891 classic “The Art & Craft of Cabinet-Making” many times, I imagine he was a Frank Klausz-like character: He knew his stuff and was happy to let the world know his opinions.
Here’s his opinion on antique furniture: “I assert that it is almost impossible to obtain a really genuine unspoiled piece of oak furniture which has (not) had the misfortune to pass through the hands of a dealer or restorer.” Their work is, generally, “not honest.”
Denning disliked iron planes, calling them “toy-like” and “not used by the practical artisan.”
And unlike many other writers, Denning embraced the use of machines in conjunction with hand tools. On the jack plane he said there is “little occasion for it” when machinery is available. And so the planing can begin with “the trying or even the smoothing plane.”
In other words, Denning sat on the precipice between hand tools and machinery in the late 19th century. Unlike other writers, Denning refused to endorse machines as the end-all, and he swerved wildly away from the Luddite path. Denning was, in many ways, like the modern woodworker who has both options available and can make the most of them.
Because of this particular viewpoint, I consider “The Art & Craft of Cabinet-Making” a classic. The book is a thorough explanation of quality furniture making during the Victorian era. Denning covers tools, workshop appliances, joints, assemblies, veneering and installing hardware in excellent detail. He also covers all the major furniture forms of the time and explains how to make them well (and how others make them poorly).
“The Art & Craft of Cabinet-Making” is available on the antique market or in “print on demand” format, a paperback version where the pages are glued together, not sewn.
I am pleased to say that Popular Woodworking Magazine has done a limited press run of the book and it’s a quality job. It’s printed in the U.S. The binding is both sewn and glued. The hardcovers are cloth-wrapped. The price is only $36, which includes domestic shipping.
You can order a copy here. Do not tarry as there is no guarantee they will do a second press run.
I’ve been asked to make the keynote address at the Lie-Nielsen Open House on July 7-8 and also will give a lecture and demonstration on “Finishing With Fire” and showing how to do it with furniture components.
For the keynote, my topic is titled “The Hand Tool Backlash,” and I’ve been working on it for several weeks now. Previous keynote speakers, such as Peter Follansbee and Roy Underhill, have made such amazing speeches at the Open House that fair ladies fainted and the sick were healed.
Though I’m no professional speaker, I vow to give it my best. (Actually, nothing can best my story about my first colonoscopy. And as I probably shouldn’t tell that particular story, this will be my second best.)
Finishing With Fire For my demonstration at 3 p.m. Friday, I’ll be assembling and finishing one of my three-legged stools with a gas torch and a mixture of linseed oil and beeswax. I’ve been experimenting with this finish for several years now and have figured out how to make it really easy, even for fire-fearing scarecrows.
Also, I’ll be happy to sell the completed stool to anyone planning to attend. These stools are $175 and are made from Southern yellow pine. I’ll be happy to customize the stool for your height on the spot. If you’d like the stool, send a note to help@lostartpress.com, and I’ll reserve it for you.
About the Event The Lie-Nielsen Open House is a fantastic family event with lots of demonstrators, toolmakers and food. In addition to me, other demonstrators include Christian Becksvoort, Danielle Rose Byrd, Phil Lowe, Peter Follansbee and Peter Galbert.
Also attending: Megan Fitzpatrick of Popular Woodworking Magazine, planemaker Matt Bickford, Tico Vogt of Vogt Toolworks, Isaac Smith of Blackburn Tools, Joshua Klein of Mortise & Tenon Magazine, furniture maker Freddy Roman, miniature maker Marco Terenzi, Kenneth Kortemeier of the Maine Coast Craft School, chairmaker and toolmaker Tim Manney, Mason McBrien from the Center for Furniture Craftsmanship, planemaker Scott Meek, Bob Van Dyke from the Connecticut Valley School of Woodworking, planemaker Dan Schwank, saw sharpener Matt Cianci, Wes Sutherland from the Guild of Maine Woodworkers, bowmaker Stim Wilcox, Rory Wood from Rare Woods, boat maker Kevin Carney, Steve Branam from the Close Grain School of Woodworking, Chris Kuehn of Sterling Toolworks and Travis Knapp of RareWoods.us.
Whew, that’s the longest list of vendors I’ve ever seen at the Open House. Should be great.
Note, I won’t be bringing any Lost Art Press books or Crucible tools with me. But Lie-Nielsen carries almost our entire line and those will be available for purchase at the event. As always, I am happy to sign your books (or anything else you put in front of me).
“Garden Gates,” The Woodworker magazine, August, 1947
“The man nowadays who is able to do a job at his own pace is one of the fortunate ones. Then to one he’ll either be a craftsman with a small workshop of his own or a man working at a hobby. A feeling of enjoyment so much more often accompanies work that is freed from outside control, when that control takes the shape of a nagging foreman or an impatient boss. The queer thing is that when these no longer have to be encountered, our own moods and temperaments want to take charge, as variable as the weather and just about as dependable. It is then that the craftsman has to assert himself and put the mood in its place, knowing very well that it will play high jinks with his work if he isn’t careful. Once he has really started, no matter how lazy or disinclined he may have felt, the odds are that the mood will recede, the work will catch hold of him and bring an enjoyment of its own.
“The pace and the manner are the things that count. If we fling ourselves into any job with a “Let’s get it over and done with” feeling, the chances are that we shall soon be running up against snags caused by own impatience. If we take it up at an even pace, then a regular rhythm of work develops, hand and eye are co-operating in friendly unison, and if we come up against difficulties we shall be all set to tackle them. At least they will not have been created by our own frenzied desire to get on, which is at the root of the most botched work.
“The sense of haste in the modern world is infectious. We must always be wanting to rid ourselves of the work in hand so that we can start something else. It may be because already we can visualise the new things as having more perfection than the old, or because we very quickly tire of a job and want novelty. Or it may all come round to the same thing, that we do not give ourselves utterly and wholly to the work we are doing, because that means putting that little bit of extra pressure on ourselves which is necessary for work of the very best kind. It is, I believe, an almost universal shirking and it keeps us working at second-best.
“And yet the opportunity is there for every man who knows how to handle a tool. Knowledge alone is not enough, skill alone is not enough, for the perfect use of them depends on what a man can give of himself. For when all is said and done he is not a precision tool, or a robot, or a machine, nor even—by nature—a machine minder. Something he is of all these things, but he has also that gift which is so utterly his own, his restless, eternal, questing spirit, which keeps him ever searching for beauty and everlastingly trying to create it. This is the power behind his technical capacity if he learns to harness it, the power by which he can attain to the sense of balance and good judgment which are among the first requisites of beauty. The rest will vary with the man himself. This is the great glory of our personality, that each individual touch is different, so that throughout the great ages of craftsmanship the work of each worker stood out from its fellows even if it was never stamped with his name. Nowadays the individual touch is swamped in mass production. But it still lives on in the small workshop and in the home, wherever there is a woodworker to remember that tools are excellent things, but that it is a man with a tool in his hand who is the hope of the world. He will always be the one to keep his own courage alight and that of his fellows, because he will have discovered some of the things he can do and know that one life is not long enough to find them all. Always there will be for him the perfection that lies in wait just round the corner, to reach which needs every ounce of the effort he can put out. And even in his failure he may pass on to his fellows those glimpses which the world will treasure, seeing in them its dearest hope.”
In March, Chris wrote a post titled “The Best Job I Ever Had.” He joined Popular Woodworking Magazine in 1996 as managing editor. I joined the magazine in 2001 as assistant editor, and then moved up to associate editor and, later, managing editor. Before Chris left for Germany he gave me some ideas for posts, and with Brendan Bernhardt Gaffney slated to join Editor and Content Director Megan Fitzpatrick and her crew in July as the new managing editor, Chris thought it might be nice if I offered a behind-the-scenes look at the job, from my perspective. So here goes. (I’m fairly certain Chris didn’t realize I have pictures.)
First, a confession: I suck at headlines. Which is why I swiped Chris’s. But the words and the sentiment are true for me as well.
Some background: I graduated from Ohio University with a magazine journalism degree in 2001. A few weeks later I moved into a sketchy studio apartment in Alexandria, Va., to write for a b-to-b mag in the printing industry. The people were great, the topic was dull and I was in love with a guy who was still in school at Ohio State University. I found an ad for an assistant editor position at Popular Woodworking Magazine, and I applied.
Remember, I was 13 at the time. (Dent is in the front.)
Steve Shanesy (editor at the time) and Chris (managing editor at the time) interviewed me. They liked my clips. They needed a wordsmith, not a woodworker. I told them about the lamp I made in junior high shop class, and that I had dropped it while working on it and, with the school year rapidly ending, I had tried to hide the dent I had made by mixing sawdust and glue, and filling it in. I told them I got a “B” in the class (which, looking back was quite generous, given my lack of skill at the lathe as well). They still hired me.
“Behind-the-scenes” can mean different things for different audiences. According to my résumé, my managing editor responsibilities looked like this:
• Responsible for day-to-day operations of a 200,000 circulation magazine that competed with six different woodworking magazines for subscribers – developed line-ups; created and maintained photography and illustration schedules; tracked status of, edited and made changes to articles; made corrections to final binder; reviewed printer page proofs; attended press checks to ensure printing quality at all hours.
• In charge of special issues – additional responsibilities included conception; developed cover lines.
• Managed approximately 40 authors, photographers and illustrators per year—negotiated, wrote and tracked approximately 100 contracts per year; in charge of manuscript submissions; established and enforced deadlines.
• Primary editor for an $83,145 manuscript budget and a $66,650 art budget.
• Wrote five features, seven how-to articles, seven profiles, two reviews and Contents page; built projects.
But honestly? I had to look all that up to remember it.
I’m only 38, but so far my years at Popular Woodworking Magazine impacted me professionally and personally more than any other job I’ve ever had (and that includes the weirdness that occurred working third-shift at Meijer’s selling jewelry to folks at 3 a.m.). I’ve spent the past week trying to pinpoint why, and I can’t. But I have some ideas.
The editors at the time insisted they were looking for a new hire with a journalism degree, not a woodworker. And while they expected me to learn the craft, just as any niche magazine editor must do, they didn’t expect me to excel at it, unlike the expectations they did have regarding the responsibilities I have on my résumé.
At the time, though, I didn’t believe them. And so I tried my damnedest to do both. All of the editors regularly pulled me into the workshop to learn. Those seven how-to articles? I built them, but with an editor guiding me every step of the way. Never was a failure laughed at or mocked (at least to my face, ha!). Instead every single one was viewed as a teaching opportunity.
One afternoon I was working on a project with Chris in his basement home shop. I forget what we were building but it involved the table saw, which I had used many times before. I don’t remember exactly what happened (maybe Chris does) but for some reason the wood drifted away from the blade. One thing I was doing right: My body was positioned not in line with the blade. Which was good, because when I realized it was all going oh-so-wrong, I looked up to see Chris, white as a ghost, waving his hands at me. I’m sure it was frantically, but I only remember it in slow motion. The kickback was so powerful that it bent the blade of one of his chisels hanging on the wall.
We stopped. I was shaking. We went to Skyline Chili for lunch. He said it would be good for me to go right back to what I was doing. So I did, with no instances of kickback this time. And he kindly refused when I asked if I could replace his chisel.
They put me into classes. I took a weeklong course at Lonnie Bird’s School of Fine Woodworking, where I built a Shaker end table. I was nervous as hell, believing that Lonnie and the fellow students would have assumptions about an editor from Popular Woodworking Magazine. But everyone was incredibly kind and respectful, and seemed to understand something that I did not: I was hired as an editor, not a woodworker, and that was OK. In fact, the only unnerving part of the week was when I tried to build a fire in the fireplace in my chilly room at the local bed and breakfast, and woke up some angry wasps.
The Shaker end table I built at Lonnie’s still sits next to my side of the bed, and has two small rings of milk stained on the top of it. I feel terribly guilty about this, every time I look at it, but in some ways, it’s fitting. That table was difficult for me to build, and took a lot of courage. But so did pumping milk and bottle feeding two twin boys in a sleep-deprived state for a year while also caring for a 2-year-old.
My children, pointing out their scars and sharing their thoughts on my past refusal to take Chris’s advice.
I, along with several editors of the magazine, built a Welsh stick chair with Don Weber. This took place shortly after my honeymoon with the guy who was studying at OSU. We currently live in a 100-plus-year-old foursquare now, and my chair sits in the entry. My kids call it “The Evil Chair.” At the time I was working on it Chris suggested I break the edges a bit more. I didn’t listen. All three of my children and my husband have scars from the times they’ve run into it. But I refuse to move it.
My house is filled with many loved treasures from my time at the magazine.
I’m fairly certain I was the only one who insisted on pictures while traveling. Christopher Schwarz and David Thiel in California, January 2003.
Then there was the traveling. We were so lucky. And as a young 20-something, the trips had a deep impact on me. Although I grew up in a family that valued and was able to travel, never before had I stayed in hotel rooms solo. And I’ve since learned that long road trips are one way to truly know another person – I knew my coworkers well.
We ate well. I, along with Steve and Al Parrish, our photographer, once ate dinner at a seafood restaurant in Boston after visiting Norm Abram for the day. They ordered raw oysters. I carefully watched them take their forks to detach the meat, pick up the oysters and slurp them down. I followed suit, pretending I knew what I was doing. I had only recently stopped being a vegetarian. (I haven’t had a raw oyster since.)
We ate burritos with Sam Maloof. Don Weber introduced me to lemon curd. Lonnie Bird introduced me to shrimp and grits. The art director, Linda Watts, who I became dear friends with (and still am) invited me to her house for movie nights where she introduced me to slightly burnt butter on popcorn—it’s delicious. Chris invited us all to his house for dinner, many times. (He’s an excellent cook.) Once we visited Eugene Sexton, on the way to something else. Sexton had a wood-drying process shrouded in mystery called ESP-90. He offered us some green beans from his garden that he said would allow us to live longer (very Tuck Everlasting-ish). I even ate some of those and as for their success, only time will tell.
As a woman in a workplace made up almost entirely of men, I was respected. My gender was never part of the conversation. Once I was helping out at our booth at a woodworking show, and a very well-known tool manufacturer had a booth next to us. They had hired a bikini-clad model whose only job was to stand with a sign that said “let me grind your wood.” I was so irked by the whole thing that the following day I told my colleagues that I was going to go over and say something to the folks who worked for the company. My fellow editors didn’t bat an eye, even though I’m fairly certain that company was an advertiser.
Celebrating the debut of Woodworking Magazine. Left to right: Steve Shanesy, Matt Bantly, David Thiel, Christopher Schwarz, Michael Rabkin, Linda Watts, myself.
The job was varied. After a day spent making editorial corrections to files and re-checking those corrections to make sure I hadn’t introduced a new mistake, I got to spend a day researching who built Pope John Paul II’s coffin. After a day spent sending contracts, writing check requests and updating our editorial calendar, I got to spend a day lugging around Al’s photo equipment two hours up north for a photo shoot at Troy Sexton’s. After a day spent reading seven manuscripts and making marks with my purple pen (we each had a different color when editing to know who to argue with when we disagreed with a change), I got to spend a day in the shop, sweeping, learning sharpening techniques or drilling so.many.holes for a Tool Test piece on cordless drills.
I often had guilt. Here I had a woodworker’s dream job and I wasn’t a (good) woodworker. I had a bit of, what I later learned was called, imposter syndrome. But with time I learned that what I had to offer was valued.
When I left and Megan became managing editor, I was in absolute awe. Here was a woman with an MA in English Literature and an exceptional knowledge of Shakespeare who poured herself into the task of learning the craft of woodworking. And only a few years in she was building the most beautiful pieces (and still is, today). She’s wicked smart and exceptionally kind. I never worked for her but still, when I was stuck in the hospital in the hell that is preterm-twin-labor-stifled-by-magnesium-sulfate, she stopped by, to visit. She’s one of my favorite people.
And Brendan, I don’t know you (yet), but after reading Megan’s post, you are a perfect fit. And know that it’s worth the move. Because editing and filing and contracting and invoicing and harping on (and on and on) about deadlines aside, this community is filled with great people. Getting to know them has been one of the great pleasures in my life. Welcome.
“I try to live right. I always try to adhere to what I think is right, and that, to me, is the most important part of creative work. So much of me goes into each piece that I make that in making each new piece, a renewal takes place. So it continues: a renewal in my commitment to my work and what I believe.” —Sam Maloof
