“Combining style, materials, and technology in a desirable product at a price the market will accept has always been the basic problem facing furniture makers. Since costs are, in part, dependent on the labor intensity of their technologies, manufacturers must design pieces with the capabilities of their tools in mind, constantly compromising between cost and style. This system of give and take is the economic interface between technology and style. It is the economics of design.”
— Michael J. Ettema, “Technological Innovation and Design Economics in Furniture Manufacture,” Winterthur Portfolio, Vol. 16, 1981. (Special thanks to Don Williams for pointing me to this article.)
Editor’s note: Jennie Alexander and Peter Follansbee have been working on “Make a Joint Stool from a Tree” for so long that it is hard to pin down the exact date when they commenced. Now that this book is in the works at the printer, I asked Peter if he would mind discussing how he and Jennie chose the joint stool as the focus of this book. Here’s the story along with some snapshots from the historical record.
If you have heard me talk or write about the joint stool book, then you know it was a work in progress for a long time. More than 20-years-long time. So long ago that I looked young. Jennie Alexander and I decided early on to focus some of our efforts on making joint stools for a couple of reasons.
One factor driving our decision was the one-week workshop format. When I first got hooked on the prospect of being a joiner in the 17th-century style, Alexander was pitching the idea of a class to Drew Langsner, director of Country Workshops. One scenario had the students building a joined chest together – one week, 10 students, one log, one chest. I was game; Drew waited. He wanted Alexander to build a chest before he would commit Country Workshops to the possible lunacy of it all. At that point, it was all conjecture and test joints on Alexander’s part.
While the joined chest is perhaps the most appealing example of joined furniture, the joint stool is an icon. It reeks of the 17th century. The size and scope of a joined chest would take longer to make in numbers than it would to make a few joint stools. Knowing that repetition was one of the keys to really getting to know how joinery works, the stool became the main project for us to pursue.
And so the joint stool project was born. We each built a couple, then got Drew to take the plunge. Our first class in this work was 1991, I think. We taught it together a couple of times at Country Workshops, also at Jennie’s workshop in Baltimore. Once I got the job at Plimoth Plantation in 1994, mostly Alexander taught it alone.
I went on to build all manner of joined works, but the stool is surely the most-attainable project in a reasonable time frame for beginners. We chose it as the ideal introduction because it requires only a small amount of timber, whether you start with the log or not. And at 16 mortise-and-tenon joints, it’s enough to get a lot of practice, but not the 26 to 40 joints – or more – that might happen in a joined chest.
Looking back through old slides while researching what we might need for the book was quite instructive. Early on we used modern workbenches, here I am mortising a stile with it caught between bench dogs in a vise, before I had any good holdfasts to secure the workpiece. In this shot, you’ll see things you’ve not seen me do before: plastic-handled chisel, rawhide mallet, maybe even pencil marks on the stock. All of these eventually got chucked as we fine-tuned the process as well as the product. It worked; it just works better now.
Using the same German bench, I am planing stock also held in the vise. Back at this point, we knew about Joseph Moxon’s bench, but hadn’t yet built something like it. Once we built period-style workbenches, things changed all for the better.
One thing did not change – the power of the drawbored joint. Here’s Alexander driving pins in a stool frame. Hasn’t move a bit in over 20 years. And it won’t over the next hundred or more…
If you order “Make a Joint Stool from a Tree” before the press date of Feb. 27, 2012, you will receive free domestic shipping. For more details on the book, visit our store. The book is $43 and is produced and printed entirely in United States with 128 pages and more than 200 full-color photos.
Some years ago at a Williamsburg woodworking conference, the inestimable Mack Headley stood on stage, checked the setting of his plane, addressed the workpiece and together they created the near-mystical, crisp “S-S-S-G-G-G-R-R-R-I-I-I-K-K-K” aria so familiar to experienced woodworkers. An audible baritone “Oooohhhh” swept the hall on appreciation of a finely sharpened tool in the hands of a master. It was perhaps the most identifiable moment of a tool speaking that I can recall. And to be sure, the audience of mostly middle-aged men in plaid flannel shirts was listening.
But the phenomenon of tools talking, and us listening, is much more fundamental, an almost visceral component in learning skilled craft. The relationship we have with our tools is among other things, audible and linguistic. Tools speak to us constantly, telling us how we are doing with them.
Last Friday saw the completion of an intense course for aspiring curators called “Historical Technology of Furniture Making” I taught with renowned furniture historian Oscar Fitzgerald (“Four Centuries of American Furniture”). Every day for two weeks Oscar would start us off with a brief overview lecture on a topic, I would follow with a demonstration of the relevant technique or process, and then supervise the students practicing it at the bench. It was a memorable opportunity for them to engage in multiple-sensory learning that they will retain throughout their careers. We started out with a chunk of the oak tree that became the replica Gragg Chair and ended the second week with the laying of gold leaf – with splitting, shaving, sawing, planing, joining, shaping, metal casting, steam bending, veneering and japanning in between.
As you can imagine, since most of the students had near-zero woodworking experience, frustration abounded. As it should. Skilled woodworking is not accomplished on the first try.
One of the phrases I kept repeating through the course was, ”Let the tool do its work.” A tool will tell you what it wants to do, and even more important it will tell you what it does NOT want to do. If the sound is organized and crisp, you are asking the tool to do what it is supposed to do. That’s what Mack Headley’s plane was saying to him and to us in the audience.
Conversely, in the hands of unskilled or unfamiliar practitioners a tool can moan, screech, growl and chatter. My students and interns can confirm that when we are working in the same space, I can hear faulty work from across the room even if my back is turned and my attention directed elsewhere. At first they cannot believe I can hear the tool talking, but over time they become believers, especially when someone newer and less experienced joins us. Then they recognize the mellow tones of their own work versus the often cringe-inducing caterwauling of the newcomers’.
About halfway through the second week of this course I knew we were making headway. I watched from some distance as a student was using a sharp little spokeshave on the mahogany cabriole leg we had made together as a class and she encountered the spokeshave telling her it really, really did not want to do what she was instructing it to do. Without even thinking, in a moment she changed her posture and direction of work, the sound became mellifluous and beautiful shavings spewed forth leaving a glistening, faceted surface. Alone, she sighed and smiled gently, rightfully pleased with the result. That dulcet moment and the little silent smile to herself was as great a reward any as teacher can experience. She had learned the lesson of the talking tool and incorporated it into her work without even thinking about it.
Ohio Book finished binding up copies of the third printing of “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” this morning. I picked them up a few minutes ago and will ship them out Priority Mail for all the people who ordered them.
We actually have a couple extra copies with this run. We always send some extra book blocks to Ohio Book to make sure we have 26 in the end. So if you still want one, you can order it in our store.
As always, the work from Ohio Book is gorgeous, and we are proud to support this family-run institution in Cincinnati.
Any minute now I’m going to develop a complex regarding my undecorated tool chest. It’s pine on the inside and black on the outside. The only eye candy is a 3/16” bead on the skirt, plus the bumps and bruises inflicted on the chest these last 13 months.
No doubt some of you have seen what Peter Follansbee has been doing to his chest.
You can read all about the painting process on Peter’s blog. There’s a piece on period designs he used to inspire his work. Plus these two illustrated posts that show the painting process here and here.
And of course, there is some carving on the inside.
There are other ways to tart up your tool chest (and “tart” is not a bad word in my lexicon). Andy Brownell at Brownell Furniture has been building a traveling-size tool chest recently using some sweet walnut.
Note the bottom boards and the strategic placement of the sap. Very nice. Also worth noting are Andy’s shots of the chest loaded with tools – you can get a lot of stuff into this slightly smaller chest. He covers tool placement and organization in this post.
And do check out this post to see how his chain makes mine look like a Hello Kitty necklace.
And finally, Megan Fitzpatrick showed up at my door on Friday with the child’s tool chest shown at the top of this post that she picked up at a local auction. Likely from the 1920s, the chest has an awesome decal on the inside of the lid, complete with an eagle.
One of the little scenes on the decal shows a young boy holding a wooden hobby horse talking to an older boy holding a hatchet. I’m not sure what they are supposed to be doing, but I imagine the end result was like a scene from “The Godfather.”
The toy chest is missing its till, but it came with some of the tools, including the hatchet.
In a few weeks I head down to Roy Underhill’s school in North Carolina to teach a class in building tool chests. We are all going to use poplar, and I am contemplating some sort of decoration for the interior panel of my lid. Perhaps a pair of painted dividers a la the Lost Art Press logo, or a buxom barbarian woman holding a bloody dismembered head.
