This is like the part in the forgettable movie “The Patriot” when you can only pay attention to Mel Gibson’s questionable woodworking skills. Indexer Suzanne Ellison passed on a bunch of details from a 14th-century illuminated manuscript of “The Romance of Alexander.”
As per usual, I am not interested in the Siege of Byzantium in the Alexander Romance but instead focus on the slant-lid chests shown in the book. Why have I not built these? They are similar in form to a Dutch tool chest. The slanted lid prevents one (one Lucy, that is) from stacking things on top of it. And it can be nailed together with a nice frame-and-panel lid – ooh, and nice blacksmith hardware.
The only thing preventing me from starting tonight is that I’m steam bending parts for an upcoming DVD – with a hot deadline breathing down my skinny neck.
This post is way overdue. One of the books I’ve been itching to read is Vic Tesolin’s “The Minimalist Woodworker” (Spring House Press), a newly published guide for woodworkers looking to explore the craft without a shed-load of tools.
Vic, who works for Lee Valley Tools by day, is one of my favorite guys in the craft. He has a no-bull-pucky way of approaching life, work and the craft. And my hope was that “The Minimalist Woodworker” would capture Vic’s spirit and his voice. And it does.
The 152-page book is a great single-point introduction to the craft. It skips all the hand-wringing parts of the craft (waterstones or oil? Band saw or table saw?) and just lays out in as few words as possible what you need to get started. Beginners don’t need a fire hose of information to build a workbench – just a good plan using simple tools and straightforward techniques.
The first 60 pages of the book introduce you to the tools and how to set up and use them. Vic lists 27 tools as the core kit with another eight that are “nice to have.” It’s a good list – one I’d be happy to pass onto a friend looking to get started.
The remainder of the book is about building the projects that will allow you to enjoy hand-tool woodworking in a space as small as the nook under the stairs. Vic begins with building a sawbench and a “bent” a sawhorse-like buddy to the sawbench.
The other projects, all built from common materials, are equally useful: a shooting board/bench hook, a mallet, and English-style workbench and a hanging cabinet for your tools. The projects include clear drawings, a cutlist and lots of step photos to guide the reader through each operation.
If you’ve ever met Vic, you know that he doesn’t mince words or waste time. And this book is like having a casual conversation with him. He calls out any bunk (or deftly sidesteps it), and he doesn’t use 30 words when four will do. You can read this book in one sitting – a point I greatly appreciate.
I’m often asked what books would be ideal for a beginning hand-tool woodworker. And we publish a few of them, including Robert Wearing’s “The Essential Woodworker.” But I’ve now added a new book to that list of highly recommended “first books.” And if you are at the beginning of the craft or know someone who is, “The Minimalist Woodworker” is a great place to start.
Headgear in the traditional shop was both practical (keep the dust out of your hair) and hierarchical (journeymen wore particular hats to separate themselves from the apprentices).
Paper hats were common in many trades, including printing and woodworking. Tools for Working Wood used to hand out paper hats and the instructions to make them at shows (Joel Moskowitz writes about them here).
Recently Jeff Burks dug up some vintage instructions for making paper hats, including this nicely illustrated example he cleaned up from Scientific American, Dec. 14, 1872. It’s a fun little exercise – and you can torture your cats with the result.
Note: During the next few months, I’ll be posting a series of essays leading up to the fifth anniversary of “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest.” This is the second essay in the series. The first is here.
Five years after leaving my job at Popular Woodworking Magazine, I’m still asked why I left my post as editor, a job I fought for 10 years to get.
There are about a dozen answers to the question. This is one of them that I can tell because enough time has passed for me and enough people have left the magazine’s parent company. The people in this story do not run the company anymore. And thank goodness.
In 2011, I was picked by the parent company to attend an “innovation summit” to brainstorm new ideas with other editors, managers and marketers from all our satellite offices worldwide. Most of the people in the room I’d worked with for years – fantastic creative types, hard workers and some number crunchers.
A few weeks before the summit, Japan had been rocked by the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami. Like many other companies, we’d helped the relief effort by donating a portion of all sales during a special corporate-wide event.
We were briefed on how much money went to relief efforts – plus how revenue had increased dramatically overall as a result of the additional sales in our online stores. Then the highest-ranking person in the room made a proposal, and that’s when the floor fell out below my chair.
“We should find one natural disaster per financial quarter and run a similar promotion corporate-wide,” he said.
My head spun and I started saying stupid things. I remember asking how many people would have to die for it to be counted as significant enough to hold a special promotion. Would domestic disasters be better than international ones? I’m not sure what else I said, but I should have kept my mouth shut.
It was that moment that I realized I was done with corporations. Not just this one. All of them. I spent the rest of the weekend a bit dizzy and nauseous.
Two other events in May 2011 had to happen before I wrote my resignation letter, but I’m not ready to discuss those – maybe in 2021.
Indexer Suzanne Ellison was browsing this week through the 1570 “Opera di M. Bartolomeo Scappi,” a huge six-part book documenting the recipes Scappi cooked for cardinals and popes. And she turned up these interesting plates featuring some early furniture forms straight from the Middle Ages and “The Anarchist’s Design Book.”
Check out the staked tables (above) with the massive square and tapered legs. I’ve been meaning to build some tables like this, but my fear is that the legs will look too weird. There’s only one way to find out, I suppose.
Also interesting: A trestle table shown from the side. I love this image because it destroys the notion that each trestle had four legs and there is a problem with the perspective of the drawing. One point here for the Middle Ages artists.
Check out the collapsible table for cooking in the countryside. This form survives today and was widely reproduced as a piece of campaign furniture.
Finally, miscellaneous furniture: a small bench for sitting (banchetta, or today it would be called la panchetta) or as a step stool. Small benches similar to the banchetta are still in use today. Or, a very interesting taller bench for scrutiny of accounts or writing (or for sitting a bit higher) with a drawer neatly tucked under the edge of the benchtop.
