Yes, I finished it. I actually wrote about it on the Popular Woodworking blog, not here. Sorry about that legerdemain, a man’s gotta eat.
Read about the chest here. More to come.
— Christopher Schwarz
6-Board Chests – the How and Why
If you subscribe to modern theories of wood movement, then most of the six-boards chests out there should have exploded into a pile of splinters, lace doilies and purple heart medals.
They are, after all, the platypus of the woodworking world. They shouldn’t exist with all their crazy cross-grain construction, nails, poisonous fangs and wide solid-wood panels. But yet, there they are – in almost every museum, attic and Americana collection.
For the last couple years I’ve been collecting data, photos and crazy ideas about pieces both antique and new that I call “The Furniture of Necessity.” And the six-board chest has been a particular source of fascination for me.
I’ve built several of these chests before, but always with the machinery mindset guiding my hand. All the panels had to be square. All the ends shot straight. All the joinery referenced off these machinist-like edges.
I can almost guarantee you that is not how these chests were built originally.
Inspired by “The Joiner and Cabinet Maker” and the work of Jennie Alexander and Peter Follansbee in “Make a Joint Stool from a Tree,” I have spent the last few months attempting to decode these chests.
And when I write “decode,” I’m talking about the step-by-step procedures that were used to build them entirely by hand. It starts, like every good story (Kon-tiki!), with some ideas and some big trees.
Here are some basic ideas I’m exploring while building a few of these chests:
1. Did the design flow from the width of the boards available? If so, what would be the approach you would use to make a chest with, say, a 17”-wide board?
2. How were the boards cut to length and width in the shop to make the most of the material and use up the minimum amount of wood?
3. What were the steps to ensure that there was the absolute minimum ripping and fussy tweaking required to get all the pieces to the correct size?
4. How were these chests assembled with the minimum number of tools? How were they done without shooting boards?
5. How were the chests assembled to make it easy for one woodworker to do it alone?
6. Why would the maker choose certain features and joints exhibited on different kinds of chests? Some have rabbets. Some have dados. Some have notched ends.
I don’t expect to come up with definitive answers, but I do have some interesting theories to test as I build these chests with the minimum number of tools, operations and time at hand. And you’ll get to follow along. Next week I’m going to build one of these chests for a new forthcoming DVD from Lie-Nielsen Toolworks that will explore these ideas and – I hope – show how durable and beautiful furniture can be built with a handful of tools and a short amount of time.
— Christopher Schwarz
What a Valuable Waste
This is about woodworking. You’ll just have to wait for it.
When I edit a book or a magazine article, I always feel shame during the process. Despite all the electronic tools available to me, I have to print the entire book at several stages of the process and work on what we call the “hard copy.”
It is a wasteful process. For example, Matt Bickford’s new book, “Mouldings in Practice,” is more than 250 pages. I think I’ve printed it out at least five times in the last six months. The printouts will get run through the printer again, and then they will be recycled. But still, that is a lot of paper, energy and waste.
I make these printouts because it helps my editing. Changing the format – from electronic to paper – makes me see the words differently. I always find things that I just couldn’t see on the screen. It could be the gestalt of the elements on the page. (You hear that Clem? He said “gestalt.”) I find things that don’t line up. I find enormous errors that I’ve been blind to for months – last night Megan Fitzpatrick (also a dirty paper waster) found a doosie in Matt’s book that everyone has been looking at for three months.
Plus I find more typos and little stuff. For me, paper is magic. I’ve tried changing the format to a tablet or a different computer, and it doesn’t help as much as printing the sucker out and going at it with a pen.
What does this have to do with woodworking? Lots. As I’ve mentioned before, “The map is not the territory.” Your scaled drawing is not the same thing as a full-size drawing, a mock-up or the real piece of furniture. You will see things – problems and triumphs – at every stage you choose to go through. But nothing – nothing – compares to the final product.
Which is why there are still typos in books after 20 people edit them. Because the territory is the territory. The book is the book. The secretary is the secretary.
— Christopher Schwarz
Wordworking
At my first newspaper job, I hated the 2 p.m. mail call. That was when Reese Fant would separate all the day’s mail into the black cubbyholes for the reporters. More days than not, I received a postcard.
The postcards were from a retired high-school English teacher, and just about every day she had some withering comment to make about my grammar, word choice, style (or lack of it).
I hated those postcards at first.
I think you know where this story is going, but I think you’re wrong. The natural story arc is for me to recognize the importance of word precision and embrace the subtleties and nuances of the English language and become an evangelist for its proper use.
Truth is, I hated those postcards at first, and within a couple years I came to absolutely loathe them. In fact, I actively rejected my fine Northwestern University-honed journalism education to write in a coarser style to see if I could cause this retired teacher to burst a blood vessel.
I know this sounds messed up from a person who trades in words, but I am far more interested in meaning over the veneer of style.
This attitude was reinforced when I was introduced to the world of professional cabinetmakers. Before my first photo shoot with one of them, I can remember studying everything I could about the joinery nomenclature that was particular to fine cabinet work.
The next day, here is what I learned.
1. Everything is a “rail.” Table aprons? Rails. Leg stretchers? Rails? Mediary stiles? Rails. Muntins? Rails. Mullions? Again, rails. And on and on. Rail, rail, rail. Did this diminish his work? No. Did it diminish my understanding of his work? No, again.
2. Everything is a “groove.” Dado? Nope, groove. Rabbet? Bzzst! Groove. Cross-grain rabbet (a fillister?). Groove again. A long mortise? Yup, a groove.
3. Every operation is “run.” Crosscut? No — run a cut. Rip? Run that to 7”. Mould an edge? Run the edge? Cut the tenon? Run the tenon. Run was the only operation. And when you make furniture for a living, you have to run, period.
Why am I telling you all this?
Today I read an interesting book, “The Wrought Covenant,” from the Brockton Art Center, which was recommended to me by Peter Follansbee. It’s a gold mine of information on early furniture, but one of the essays had the following statement:
“We should further the retrieval of a proper seventeenth-century furniture typology by referring even to the individual parts of each form as much as possibly by their correct period name and placement; if we are to enter the craftsman’s world and his community aesthetic, we must learn their organization from his point of view, not ours.”
This stuff really makes me crazy. On the one hand, using words in a precise manner makes it easier to talk about things across a distance, such as when using the Internet. On the other hand, the language divides us. We discount people who haven’t learned the precise words for a haunch or a bolection.
Well, screw that.
If the meaning is clear, we are cool. Period. If the work is solid, we are cool. I am not silently correcting your grammar or word choice. I don’t give a poo if you don’t call it a dado or a micro-bevel or a “land.” In the end, anyone who becomes immersed in the craft will get the hang of the lingo. But until then, to quote one of the best movies ever, “Lighten up Francis.”
— Christopher Schwarz
Joint Stools Without a Lathe
Before “Make a Joint Stool from a Tree” was a book, it was a workshop that Jennie Alexander and I taught a few times. The first session was 1991 at Drew Langsner’s Country Workshops. We had 12 students – several from the museum world, a few woodworkers and some innocent victims. Alexander and I used to duck out to the porch outside the shop and whisper, “What do we do next?” It was a free-for-all – especially when it came to the turned decoration on the stiles. A few students took the plunge and turned their stiles, a few made stopped chamfers and another batch made shaved “turned” decoration.
When we got around to actually finishing the book, I opted to use only the shaved/stopped chamfers as the “alternate” decoration for stiles. One of the reasons the book took us ages to complete is that we always tried to put everything we knew in it – so finally I left stuff out and got it done.
Today I made a sample stile with decoration that mimics or at least follows the turned patterns, but is cut using only a saw and some chisels. I used a spokeshave a bit, too. We find these forms from time to time on 17th-century examples, so if you’re ready to make a stool, and the turned work is intimidating, here’s a simple alternative.
I used a square and awl to line out the demarcations for the collar, bevel etc., then cut in with a backsaw at a few of these lines. You can use a marking gauge to help define the depth of these saw cuts. I started to, but then I just eyeballed it.
After making the saw cuts, the next step is to chop down to these kerfs with the chisel. Work alternately between bevel down, bevel up, hand-pressure and mallet work. I found it helpful on this, my-first-one-ever, to keep rotating the stile on the bench, working each face in succession. Must be from years of turning these things… .
The stile shown is a simple version, somewhat based on some northern Massachusetts chairs of the mid-17th century. I have seen more elaborate examples that have “coves,” “beads,” “collars” and more – just like turned work.
— Peter Follansbee
Editor’s note: Be sure to check out Peter’s blog for more on joint stools, 17th-century joinery and bird photography.