If you or a woodworking friend are wondering what the heck a stick chair is, we’ve made a page that is a quick but complete introduction to the form. It also explains how all our stick chair products relate to the form. So you can better decide if you should go Old School (“Welsh Stick Chairs” by John Brown) or American (“The Stick Chair Book“) or historical (“The Welsh Stick Chair: A Visual Guide“). So yes, the page is a bit commercial. Selling books keeps the lights on here at the blog.
I started this “gift guide” years ago after watching a woodworking TV personality’s “gift guide” for one of his sponsors. Clearly, he’d been given a list of worthless garbage products that were severely overstocked.
I thought: What if some poor spouse actually took this clown’s advice?
Our gift guide is – as always – unsponsored. Toolmakers who ask to be included in the guide (and they sometimes do) are automatically excluded from it. We don’t make money from these recommendations – there are no affiliate links. We bought all of these items with our own lunch money and have been using them in the shop this year.
Finally, we try to recommend small items – things that your kids can afford to give you. And I usually throw in one high-price item, in case you’ve been extra good this year.
I’ve been doing this guide for many years. You can read past recommendations here. There also are several earlier years of the gift guide on the Popular Woodworking site. But good luck finding those. You’ll need a crowbar.
I hope I have listed enough caveats to tamp down the usual questions. Let’s get started.
AccuSharp Knife Sharpener
Might as well start with one that will make the sharpening experts howl. For many years I have sharpened all my shop knives and kitchen knives with this humble and inexpensive sharpener from AccuSharp.
You can find these for $10, and even the low-rent model will last a decade. And you can buy replacement abrasive guts when they wear out. The “professional” one shown here costs $5 more and has more metal components. But the result is the same.
The things are dead-nuts easy to use. Hold the knife flat on a table with its edge facing up. Pull the sharpener over the blade (the plastic scabbard protects you). It will refresh an edge in three or four strokes.
What I adore about this sharpener is that it will bring a dead knife back to life. Just stroke the blade some more until you get a good edge.
Some of you might be wondering why I prefer this gizmo to a knife steel or stones. The answer is simple: speed. When I’m cooking I don’t have time to stone my knives. I need to get that tomato dissected ASAP. And the edge from the AccuSharp is better than serviceable.
Same goes with my shop knives. When I’m opening boxes or whatnot, I don’t have the time to pause and stone my pocket knife. So I grab the AccuSharp and am back to work in seconds.
And because it’s easy, all my knives stay sharp.
I use this sharpener on all my knives, except for my laminated Japanese ones. Those have to be stoned.
I know there are people who find Zen in sharpening their knives, perhaps by the campfire. I am not that guy.
Available everywhere.
— Christopher Schwarz
To read previous entries in the gift guide, click here.
Often when we start working on a new book, among the first steps are to acquire any good (and sometimes bad) research that’s already been done on the subject – at least for topics that haven’t been written about ad nauseam (see workbenches…or Shaker furniture; we’d need far more shelving to hold everything written on those subjects).
This bookshelf bay holds just about everything Chris could find that’s been written on campaign furniture, from books – OK, book – to various magazine articles and (most helpful) the catalogs from Christopher Clarke Antiques. Also, period sales catalogues for British Empire posting needs.
It also holds some “overflow” and backup tools.
Let’s start with the Army & Navy Co-operative Society price lists. These listed just about everything the British military man could need or want for his self, family or house – whether posted to a colony or not. Find what you needed, then go to one of the stores, or have it delivered (sometimes free of charge), from London to Kolkata (formerly known as Calcutta). Chris bought three of the price lists, because in addition to a vast selection of pie frills, corsets and party performers (see below), you could purchase campaign (and other) furniture. In our collection are the price lists from March 15, 1907, 1923-24 and 1929-30. These are fascinating – and you can now find most of them digitized online (you could not in 2014, when “Campaign Furniture” was published). But that does take away the fun of paging through them from the comfort of my Rhoorkhee chair (I could lose whole days in these).
The colorful paperback books to the left of the Price Lists are every print catalog that Chris could get his hands on (and in the black binder to the far left are printout of the digitized ones that weren’t available in print) from Christopher Clarke Antiques Ltd., an incredible store in the Cotswolds of England – and the only place that specializes (specialises?) in British military campaign furniture and travel-related antiques. The Clarke brothers, Sean and Simon, kindly answered all the questions Chris had that no one else could, and they proofread “Campaign Furniture” for us. Their shop is half store, half research library. They have every photo of every piece they’ve ever acquired and sold, along with notes about it and its history. They’re under contract for a book with Lost Art Press – and we eagerly await their having time to write it. In the meantime, follow their Instagram feed for close-up looks at some fascinating pieces.
Tucked alongside the Christopher Clarke catalogues is “Britain’s Portable Empire: Campaign Furniture of the Georgian, Victorian, and Edwardian Periods,” a 2001 museum exhibition catalogue from The Katonah Museum of Art in New York.
On the far right are “Edwardian Shopping: A Selection from the Army & Navy Stores Catalogies 1898-1913” compiled by R.H, Langbridge (David & Charles, 1975) and “Britsh Campaign Furniture: Elegance Under Canvas, 1740-1914,” by Nicholas Brawer (Abrams, 2001), the earliest book we know of on the subject. (Brawer was also the curator for the museum exhibition mentioned above.)
The aforementioned black binder also holds copies of various antiques magazines that featured articles on select pieces of campaign furniture, and the working layout of the first draft of “Campaign Furniture.”
Now the tools: These are a mix of tools that are backups in case Chris’s primary versions get lost/destroyed/etc. (the Lie-Nielsen No. 3, a Lie-Nielsen 60-1/2 block plane, an extra block plane blade, a Blue Spruce 16 ou. mallet*, a Lucian Avery scorp and a Tite-Mark cutting gauge), and overflow tools – things he now longer uses…mostly because we now have versions of them from Crucible Tool (the Sterling Tool Works dovetail marker and two small Vesper Tools sliding bevels ). Also stored there is the first of the Crucible Tools Sliding Bevel that worked like it was supposed to (a lot of R&D went into making the two locking mechanisms perfect).
The sepia photo is a period original that shows a nattily dressed man leaning against an English-style bench; he’s holding a pair of dividers. So of course we had to have it. The marquetry panel is a thank-you gift from a Kickstarter campaign to which Chris donated.
The bookend (which shows one of Cincinnati’s Art Deco gems, Union Terminal) is from Rookwood Pottery.
– Fitz
*That Blue Spruce mallet is brand new. When I was leaving to teach in Florida last month, I grabbed the older backup one and tossed it in my carry-on. I was assured by my shopmate and a visitor that I would have no trouble with it at TSA – they’d taken one through security many times. They were wrong. So I bought us a new backup as I awaited boarding. (Thank goodness I didn’t try to take my beloved and irreplaceable blue Blue Spruce mallet!)
p.s. This is the fifth post in the Covington Mechanical Library tour. To see the earlier ones, click on “Categories” on the right rail, and drop down to “Mechanical Library.” Or click here.
For most of my career, I have helped other woodworkers “get published.” That task could be as simple as spell checking their excellent work. Or as involved as being a ghost writer – taking an oral history of their work and transforming it into an article or entire book.
After 25 years of doing this, I find most skilled woodworkers fall into two categories: Those who want to make things easy for other woodworkers. And those who want to make things hard.
Both approaches are valid.
Making Things Hard It’s difficult to argue with this approach. Woodworking is inherently difficult, and pushing others to do things “the hard way” creates hard-bitten, independent, skill-junkie woodworkers.
Sometimes the “hard road” is about withholding information from students. If you decline to explain critical steps of the process, the student then has to fill in the blanks. The information is then earned, rather than given. And it is therefore cherished when finally obtained.
Sometimes the “hard road” is about setting limitations on tools or materials. If you want to build a certain piece, then you lay down the only accepted way to go about it. One example: Want to build a 17th-century-style carved oak chest? Then you must learn to rive green oak. Dry it a bit. Then carve it. Lumberyard kiln-dried oak will never look right.
And sometimes the “hard road” is about cracking the whip. The lessons are complete and detailed. But if you don’t follow them to the letter, there is a price to pay. You will be yelled at, belittled or mocked until you learn to do things correctly.
It’s difficult to argue with the results of these approaches, and I am in no way criticizing these approaches. Some of my best teachers approached their lessons these ways. And I have been subject to all three. One boss delighted in “firing me” at least once a week when I did something too slow or poorly.
Making Things Easy I cannot for the life of me make things difficult for students. It’s not in my programing. I am far too terrified that the craft will shrivel away because I didn’t explain to the next Norm Abram the right way to saw a tenon shoulder.
So I spend hours at the bench agonizing over how to explain a technique to readers. How can I make this easier? How can I do this with fewer tools? How can I reduce the need for years of practice from this operation (without adding some complex machine)?
This month I have been obsessed with figuring out the best way to cut 1″-diameter x 2-1/4″-long tenons on the ends of chair legs.
The expensive way: Buy a lathe.
The hard way: Shave them to fit.
The easy way? That’s what I have been working on. I have developed two approaches. The first involves sawing the tenon’s shoulder, then riving away most of the material with a hacking knife or chisel. Then finishing the tenon with an inexpensive tenon/plug cutter chucked in a brace or a drill. The result is perfect tenons that look “traditional.”
But my brain wanders. Why can’t the tenons be “loose” – like a Domino? All this approach requires is a 1″ drill bit and some 1″-diameter oak dowel. Drill a mortise in the end of a leg. Drill a mortise in the seat. Glue the loose tenon (made from a dowel) into the leg. Then glue the completed leg into the seat. Easy.
Wally hopes you can join us on Saturday, Nov. 26, from 10 a.m.-5 p.m. for our holiday open house (at which you might consider giving him a cat treat or 10). We’ll have available our full line of Lost Art Press books, Crucible Tools and apparel, including new baseball caps – khaki with the English square (from the cover of “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” cover) embroidered in black. We’ll also have a selection of “blems” – slightly damaged books – at half price (blems are, as always, cash only please).
Plus, we’ll have a special gift for the first 100 or so visitors – a gum eraser stamped with the Lost Art Press logo (I’ll post pictures when I have those in the shop). And if you’re 21 or older, do ask to see the clock. (We’ll also have treats and beverages for those who eschew alcohol, of course).
We’ll be happy to raise a glass with you, and an answer your woodworking questions – or even demonstrate any techniques that are flummoxing you (preferably before raising too many glasses). And I believe we’ll have a special guest demonstrator, too – more on that to come!
