Note: We have sold out of our allocation of this title.
Hardbound special edition with a slipcase. Signed, stamped and numbered by the author. Only 500 copies available. With upgraded paper, binding, cloth cover and endsheets.
One of the most important woodworking books published in the 20th century, “Japanese Woodworking Tools: Their Tradition, Spirit & Use” introduced Japanese woodworking tools and methods to the English-speaking woodworking world.
The book remains, in our opinion, the best treatise on Japanese tools for any woodworker seeking to explore this great woodworking tradition. First printed in 1984, “Japanese Woodworking Tools” electrified the English-speaking woodworking world and helped introduce Japanese chisels, sharpening stones, saws and planes to the West.
Every book comes stamped and signed by Mr. Odate.
Now the publisher, Linden Publishing, has created a special edition of this worthy book. Printed in the United States using high-quality paper and a sewn binding, this new edition comes in a beautifully printed slipcase. The book features nice endsheets, each signed, stamped and numbered by Odate.
The publisher has printed 500 copies of this special edition. Once they are gone, they will be gone forever. Lost Art Press has been allocated 100 copies of this book to sell. (The book will not be available through Amazon or other mass-market retailers.)
We are pleased to carry this book, as it has been one of our favorites for decades.
If you have ever wanted a durable and permanent copy of this standard woodworking book, or know someone whose life has been changed by Odate’s work, we think you will be quite pleased with this special edition.
Ben Thresher and his line-shaft mill are among the last of their kind. Once driven by water, Thresher’s machinery is now run by a tractor and power take-off
The following is excerpted from “The Workshop Book,” by Scott Landis. First published in 1991, it remains the most complete book about every woodworker’s favorite place: the workshop.
“The Workshop Book” is a richly illustrated guided tour of some of the world’s most inspiring workshops — from garage to basement shops, from mobile to purpose-built shops.
Note: Ben Thresher died in 1995; his mill has since been restored and is now a museum. Find out more at bensmill.com.
Falling water has powered mills and machinery for several thousand years. Until the Civil War, when it was eclipsed by steam, water was the principal source of stationary power in America, spawning tens of thousands of small mills all over the Northeast. Several Shaker communities piped water great distances underground to run their machines.
For a brief while at the end of the last century, water and steam lived side by side. But the eventual decline of water as a primary source of local power parallels a similar transition between craft and manufacturing. (The recent revival of both craft and small hydro projects may be more than coincidental.) In today’s “post-industrial” society, water power is a comforting reminder of an age in which craft was more than a luxury.
Collapsed mills and breached dams flank the rivers of New England, but on a winding road in northern Vermont, one old woodshop clings stubbornly to its bank. I first saw “Ben’s Mill” in a film of the same name, which was produced in the early 1980s. When I visited the mill (shown above) in East Barnet, Vermont, last spring, I drove right past it, never thinking it might house a working shop. With its broken windows and overgrown yard, the haggard structure looked even more disreputable than it did in the film. Clinging to the clapboard beneath the eaves were traces of rust-colored paint that the mill’s owner, Ben Thresher, figure are original. “Modern latex wouldn’t last that long,” he says, and he’s sure he never painted it.
These meticulous drawings of Ben’s Mill (shown above and on the following pages) are the product of a joint undertaking, begun in 1976 with an engineering survey conducted by Earl MacHarg and Arthur Nadeau under the auspices of the Vermont Folk life Research Project of the Woodstock Foundation. Work was completed in 1979 by a team of architects, a photographer and a historian, employed by the Historic American Engineering Record. According to Ben Thresher, no effort was spared to make the drawings as accurate as possible. When he pointed out that a 1-15/16-in. dia. shaft had been drawn at 2 in., they immediately corrected the error and apologized profusely, saying, ‘You see any other mistakes, you let us know.’
The mill has become a Vermont institution and Thresher is a local legend, doling out sturdy country woodwork and droll humor in equal measure. For half a century, he has served the seasonal needs of his farming neighbors – building cordwood sleighs for the winter, wooden cattle tubs in the spring and tool handles all year. The fall before my visit, Thresher pressed 6,000 gallons of cider. It’s a no-frills operation, and Thresher would certainly be more at home in the Dominy shop than in many modern furniture studios I visited.
In the film, Thresher notes, “I was just a johnny-come-lately. The real history of it came way before me.” Ben’s Mill is situated about 2-1/2 miles up Stevens Brook from the Connecticut River, New England’s major inland artery. At one time, there were at least four mills in Barnet – including a gristmill, a sash and blind factory and a sawmill on Thresher’s side of the village – and three more in West Barnet (two more gristmill and a woodshop like Thresher’s).
Ben’s Mill has been running since 1848 on the site of an earlier sawmill, and it is the only survivor. The mill hasn’t run off water since 1982, when a flood swept away one end of the dam and part of the penstock. Thresher installed a concrete foundation the following year to keep the mill from sliding into its own stream. He calls it his “monument,” and says, “it wouldn’t be there now if it hadn’t been for me. I’m just that stubborn.” Although electricity was installed on Thresher’s road in 1903, he uses it to power only three bare bulbs, an electric drill and a small motor. In the early days, he recalls, the lights in the shop dimmed when the farmers down the road began their evening milking.
The machinery is now powered by a small tractor, which is belted to the mill’s main lineshaft. Apart from having to oil the wooden bearings (which used to be lubricated with water) and not having to drain and clean the penstock, operation and maintenance of the mill is about the same as it was when it was water driven. “Of course it’s different work,” Thresher says. “It comes out about the same … except you have to buy gasoline.”
In the beginning, Thresher put in 16-hour days at the mill, adding, “Maybe I’d be able to do more now if I hadn’t done so much then.” He relates one particularly chilling episode about an ice floe that jammed the gates open. Thresher waded into the waist-deep water and chopped the ice out with an ax until he could pound the gates shut with a sledge. The next morning, it was -27° F but the dam was full and the mill was running. “I wouldn’t do that now,” he says.
Nowadays, Thresher doesn’t work much in the mill in the winter – it’s dark and the walls are uninsulated. But sometime around April (or on an occasional warm winter clay), he shuffles down the hill from his house across the road, rolls back the front door and fires up the tractor. For the last ten years, Thresher has worked alone. “I’m used to it,” he says. “No arguments that way.” On a more serious note, he adds, “I do so many different things that you pretty well lose your time to do [an employee’s] work.” Shrugging at the triphammer in the corner of the blacksmith shop, “That’s the best man I ever had,” he says. “It won’t talk back.”
Over the years, the river has proved company enough. The water may be high or low, frozen or flooding, but it’s never the same. When the mill was running, water flowed through a gate at one end of the wooden dam and into the penstock. Ben built the penstock in 1949 out of hemlock and tamarack, tough softwood that lasts about as long as oak. In its construction, the penstock resembles a horizontal wooden silo, with metal spline in the butt-jointed ends of the boards to keep it from leaking. As the wood swells, the joints seal “just the same a a tub,” Ben explains, “and as well.”
At the end of the penstock is a horizontal turbine, built in 1911, the year before Thresher was born. The flow of water is controlled by a cast-iron “cheesecake” gate inside the turbine or by boards shoved in front of the penstock. Next to the penstock in the basement is an old boiler, which Thresher uses to fire a steambox to bend wagon wheels and sled runners or to evaporate cider jelly.
The tailwater beneath the turbine is 16 ft. below the top of the mill pond, a drop (or “head”) that generated 29-1/2 hp, or enough to run all the shop machinery at once. (According to Thresher, the 2-ft. long draft tube beneath the turbine added almost as much power as the drop from the pond.) “You could nun a 1-/2-in. dia. bit in the drill press and slow it right down,” Thresher explains, “and you’ve still got the torque.”
Thresher pulls the wheel on his bandsaw to jump start it in motion and explains that the machinery “is pretty much like it was 100 years ago.” In the last 40 years, he has purchased only two machines – a drill press and a lathe – and the drill press was older than the one it replaced. A horizontal boring machine, more than 100 years old, was moved into the shop from another mill. The elegant cast wheel on the Carey jointer is stenciled “Lowell Ma. 1870.” He has two table saws: a sliding saw for crosscutting and a hinged saw for ripping. (The depth of cut is controlled by lifting one end of the hinged top.) “Boy, if I had the lumber that went across that table it’d be quite a pile,” Thresher says.
Most of the machinery is situated in the middle of the first-floor workspace, and Ben works across the width of the shop. That way, the material is less likely to interfere with other machines, and he can open a window or the large sliding door to accommodate long stock. There’s hardly a tool guard in the building. “OSHA would shut me right down,” Thresher says, “only I don’t hire anybody.” Over the years, the machines have caught him only once, when he snagged his sleeve in the table saw and lost the first digit of one thumb.
What OSHA never got around to doing, time is taking care of. Between spring floods and winter frosts, upkeep on the dam and penstock is enough to make anyone think twice about generating their own power. (Thresher has rebuilt the dam four times.) Still, water is more efficient than just about any other source of power – including electricity, gasoline or wind. It’s 90 percent efficient, according to Thresher, and he hated to see it go. Sometimes he still talks as though it hadn’t. As I left, he told me, “If it keeps raining, we’ll have a good year.”
Editor’s note: Please note you are entering the Chair Chat area, a place full of naughty language, toilet humor, bad dad jokes, inappropriate musings, infantile jokes, plain bad jokes, very ugly chairs and many other things that can harm a to a not-yet-fully developed brain like a child. We again rate this post PG13, because of all the bad words. We don’t want to harm anybody.
Good news. The beautiful waxed cotton canvas holders for “The Woodworker’s Pocket Book” are back in stock at Texas Heritage Woodworks. And they now come in two colors (blue and grey). Act quickly because they usually sell out fast.
I’m calling this a book report rather than a review, because I don’t have the gumption right now to write a proper formal review. So please forgive the relatively casual nature of what follows.
I love this book, which was recently published by Routledge. (I’m linking to the sales page at Amazon because the publisher’s ordering system has proven problematic. I am still waiting for the copy I ordered pre-publication.) The historical overview of women in woodworking is fascinating, including consideration of women picking up where men left off in wartime, and a wonderfully insightful discussion of the role played by the D.I.Y. movement in drawing women in. Earlier sections of the history include lots of information gleaned from research by Suzanne Ellison right here at Lost Art Press, a wonderful tribute to Ellison herself and to the Lost Art Press blog for publishing it. The international dimension is also noteworthy, though the book is overwhelmingly grounded in North America.
My favorite aspect of the book is the intellectual perspective that Deirde Visser brings to the subject, which she treats with welcome nuance. Many pages of my copy are covered with laudatory notes. I greatly appreciate that Visser and her colleague in the project early on, Laura Mays, saw fit to include not just art and studio furniture makers, but builders of custom work who happily refer to their workspaces as shops, and builders of buildings (albeit to a lesser extent).
The book is refreshingly free from top-down, supercilious attitude. Rather, its embrace of a diverse cross section of makers and making reflects beautifully on Visser herself. Kudos in particular to her and to the legendary Wendy Maruyana for including such gems as, “With characteristically self-effacing humor, Maruyama opened our conversation stating, ‘I’m not a great woodworker.’ She is talking about technique: ‘Making a perfect joint doesn’t come naturally to me. It’s quite a struggle, actually. So I frustrate myself because you always measure yourself up with other woodworkers and think ‘Oh fuck.’ In fact, Maruyama is perfectly capable of exemplary technique.” If you really want to invite people into a field, this is one way to do it.
It takes a strong spine to admit to imperfection in furniture making, and this in its own right is a welcome bit of iconoclasm. Furniture is made to be used, not just admired. In most cases the perfection of joinery or the attention given to finishing the back of a dresser or the underside of a table has far more to do with the maker’s conceit, or playing into widespread expectations of “quality” in the luxury furniture market (barf), than with actual durability or ability to serve the purpose for which a piece is made, which also has a bearing on who will be able to afford it. This, too, is for the underdog to point out, and women in this field have traditionally been underdogs.
I can’t imagine having to choose which makers to feature in such a project and am honestly baffled and gobsmacked to have found myself included. It’s a real honor. The sheer diversity of featured makers is admirable. So many others deserve to be included in a work of this kind, but as someone who has edited essay collections and copy edited Marc Adams’s “The Difference Makers,” I understand the need to make really tough decisions. That said, if there is one person whose absence is conspicuous in the discussion of particular women who have championed the cause of inviting women in and giving those women already in woodworking the visibility they deserve, it’s Megan Fitzpatrick, in particular during the years she worked as editor at Popular Woodworking; Megan has gone out on many a fragile limb, risking her own livelihood and fielding many an indignant comment from people who still don’t see the need to shine a light on members of specific underrepresented groups. Fitzpatrick would have fit perfectly into the part of the book that discusses efforts others have made in giving women woodworkers the recognition they’re due.
While this is by no means a formal review, I hope it’s clearly an appreciation and a strong recommendation. Thank you Deirdre Visser, Laura Mays and Phoebe Kuo, for conceiving this work. Looking back over the years in which I have been aware of this project, and the conversations I had early on about publishers with Mays, I recognize the massive investment of time and energy this book represents. I love it. What a joy!
