When I finished up writing “The Anarchist’s Design Book” in January 2016, there were two projects that I wish I’d included: a staked armchair and a staked settee.
At the time, my designs for these two pieces were still juvenile. Well maybe that’s not correct. They were too complex to be presented in a book aimed at simple forms. So I set them aside. During the last 12 months, I’ve completed these two designs and began building the staked armchair this week.
For the armchair, I finally got the arm shape to my satisfaction while drinking a beer in a Cleveland restaurant (that’s the 45-second sketch above). While the arm is dead simple, it has an interior curve that echoes the curve at the back of the seat and a bevel on the front that repeats the bevel on the underside of the seat.
I’m going to photograph the construction process and share it here on the blog. After I get this armchair built and I also finish the settee we might add them to the next printing of “The Anarchist’s Design Book.” (If we do that, we will offer free downloads of the new chapters to all previous purchasers, no matter where you bought the book.)
This armchair will be made with sycamore and hickory left over from the last chair.
After reading hundreds (thousands?) of historical woodworking texts I have noticed a mantra for making furniture: Use wood that is well-seasoned.
It’s fantastic advice. Perhaps it’s even the starting point for all fine furniture making. But does it apply to building your workbench? If we follow the historical texts, then yes. I have yet to find any old book that says: The stock for your bench can be a little (or a lot) wet.
And yet, here’s the problem that I have discovered after years of building benches. Thick stock (6”, for example) can take way more than a decade to dry. I’ve cut into 6”-thick slabs that had been air-dried for 13 years that were more than 60 percent moisture content (MC). That’s way above the 6 percent recommended by many books.
Should one wait 50 more years with these slabs? Use MDF instead?
After working with massive wet slabs for the last seven years or so, I offer this recommendation based on personal experience – not on historical research or anything I’ve gleaned from my library:
Use wet wood for your benchtop. Even if it has been seasoned less than a year, you’ll be OK. Just be prepared to flatten the thing. And don’t be an idiot about your undercarriage (that sounds like advice to my teenage self).
Here’s my strategy with wet slabs: Use a species for the benchtop that dries readily, such as red oak. For the undercarriage, use wood that is at equilibrium moisture content. Because these components are rarely more than 3” thick they can be kiln-dried.
This combination works well in my experience. The undercarriage is dry. It won’t shrink. But it acts like a frame for drying the top, which shrinks around the joints on the tops of the legs.
Yes, the top will distort a bit as it dries. But you’re a woodworker – flatten the sucker.
But when the benchtop finishes drying after a few years, you will find it to be glorious. Slab tops don’t move much (if at all) after a few years in the shop. They just sit there like a machinist’s reference surface.
I think it’s worth the effort to find a slab. And I think it’s worth the effort to work with a wet one.
The last few wet slabs I’ve worked with came from North Carolina sawyer Lesley Caudle. He sells kits for workbenches that are inexpensive and ready to go – you just have to pick them up or work with Lesley to get them trucked to you. (You can email Lesley at lesley27011@yahoo.com.) Don’t be alarmed if the benchtop was cut less than 12 months ago. Embrace it.
During the last few months we’ve all been working on a lot of projects behind the scenes that haven’t gotten much attention here on the blog. Here’s a quick update on all of our active projects.
‘Carve the Acanthus Leaf’ by Mary May Meghan, the page designer, and I have been working on finalizing the design for Mary’s book. It’s a complex piece of work – there are so many art and text elements that we are having to rethink how we design our books to get it right. Expect this book in the late spring.
Copperplate Engravings from ‘The Anarchist’s Design Book’ Last year we promised we would sell handmade copperplate engraving prints from “The Anarchist’s Design Book” that were made by Briony Morrow-Cribbs. But then my calendar went to crap and I got bogged down in revising “Handplane Essentials” for F+W Media. On Feb. 1 we will offer all of the plates from “The Anarchist’s Design Book” for sale. And if you order the complete set you’ll receive a handmade book box from Ohio Book to hold them.
New Titles in the Works In addition to the books coming about John Brown and by Jögge Sundqvist and Bill Rainford, we have some other titles in the works that we haven’t talked much about. Megan Fitzpatrick is finishing work on Peter Follansbee’s new book (tentatively titled “Joiner’s Work”), and I am thrilled to announce we will be publishing a boundary-pushing book by David Savage titled “The Intelligent Hand.” I’ll be writing more about all these titles in the coming weeks.
Letterpress Posters from ‘The Anarchist’s Tool Chest’ I’ve found a significant cache of these posters in a box high on a shelf at our storefront. We’ll try to get there in the web store in the coming weeks.
Letterpress Book on ‘Roman Workbenches’ We are closing in on getting this book to press. We hope that it will be $77 for the letterpress version. The pdf version will be much less. And the standard offset version (due later this year) will be expanded and reasonably priced.
Lie-Nielsen Hand Tool Event March 10-11 If you attended the Lie-Nielsen event in Covington last year, then you know it was one of the best hand-tool events of 2016. This year we are participating in the event again at Braxton Brewing. We’re also arranging an event at Rhinegeist Brewing that will involve barbecue, beer and (wait for it) Hammerschlager. Details to come.
As always, we don’t have updates on books that aren’t in our hands. So you’ll have to wait longer on Andrew Lunn’s book.
— Christopher Schwarz
P.S. Sorry for all the product updates lately. Tomorrow I hope to post an entry on workbenches that will infuriate a lot of people.
Will Myers working on one of the mortises in the base.
Note: This bench sold before lunch yesterday. Thanks for everyone’s interest.
This week Will Myers, John and I are building a massive slab workbench in the Roubo style for an upcoming video (more on the video later). We’re just about done with the shoot and are offering the finished bench for sale at a very good price.
But here’s the non-negotiable catch: You have to come get it (we’re in the Cincinnati area). We cannot ship this bench.
The bench is a massive single-slab oak top – 5-1/2” thick and 9’ long – made from red oak harvested and cut in North Carolina by Lesley Caudle. The joinery is all traditional. The base is all drawbored mortise-and-tenon. The top is joined to the base with the classic through-tenon and sliding dovetail joint found on French benches. The bench is 34″ high.
The leg vise features a Benchcrafted classic vise screw with a Crisscross mechanism. The planing stop is handmade by blacksmith Peter Ross. The holdfast is from Crucible Tool. The bench is finished with boiled linseed oil.
Right now the bench components are still a little above equilibrium moisture content for the Midwest. Some bits are 12 percent; some of the thick bits are at 16 percent. But the bench will dry quickly in the next few months if stored indoors. Like all slab workbenches, you’ll need to flatten the top once it settles down. But Will and I think this slab is really mild – it was dead flat when we started with no twist.
The price is $3,000, cash or check. It goes to the first person to say: I’ll take it and I’ll come get it. If you want it, please send an email to help@lostartpress.com. If we don’t find a buyer, we’ll just throw the bench on the large pile of benches behind my shop.
We are quickly closing in on getting “Roman Workbenches” to press at Steamwhistle Press, and I would like to tell you this now: This is unlike any book we have done before.
The book will be printed letterpress on an old Vandercook proofing press – the same press we used to print “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” posters. To print the book we will first make special polymer plates that will be affixed to the bed of the Vandercook. Every sheet of paper will be fed by hand into the press and pulled for drying by hand.
Normally we print our books at Lost Art Press using a modern and highly automated offset process, which is (relatively) inexpensive and produces a nice result.
But letterpress printing is something else. It’s physical instead of chemical. Every character and every line makes an impression into the paper. The ink spread is regulated by hand. So a letterpress book is as much a textural experience as an intellectual one. If you have ever held a book from the 18th or 19th century and wondered why it spoke to you, my guess is you have sensed this manufacturing difference.
This week Brian Stuparyk at Steamwhistle and I pored over paper samples to find the right combination of brightness, weight and texture. Right now it looks like we are going to use paper from Mohawk, which made the paper for the deluxe edition of “Roubo on Marquetry.”
Also, Nicholas Moegly is now working on the 14 hand-drawn illustrations for the book (a draft of Figure 1 is at the top of this entry).
Once we deliver our finished layouts to Brian at Steamwhistle, he estimates it will take him an entire month of running the press to print the 500 books we’ve ordered.
After going over all the details of this book – handmade benches, handmade illustrations and a manual letterpress, I wondered: What the &^%* am I doing here?
But this weekend we had the Lost Art Press storefront open and we were busy from the time I unlocked the doors until I kicked the last two customers out at 5:15 p.m. Many of them were fascinated by the two Roman workbenches in my shop. How do they work? How did you find out about them? How did you make them? Can you use them to build furniture?
This short book – 64 pages and only 3/8” thick – will answer all those questions. And it will be a (for lack of a better word) sensual experience.
The downside? There will only be 500. That’s the absolute limit for the equipment, people involved, space and energy. We’ll sell it only through Lost Art Press (there really aren’t enough to ship them to retailers). But we’ll make special arrangements so international customers can buy them from us.
We’ll have a price for the book and more details later this week. Until then, I hope you dream of Perdix (shown above) and the tools he invented.
