The following is excerpted from our reprint of “Woodworker’s Pocket Book,” edited by Charles H. Hayward. I have screwing on the brain (so to speak) because I’ve been teaching Kale about pilot holes and clearance holes. I could have just handed this book to Kale, and it likely would have provided more clarity than did I. And it is certainly more succinct!
– Fitz
Screws can be obtained in many metals and finishes, sizes and types.
METALS. The chief kinds are mild steel (iron) and brass, but in addition screws are made in copper, gunmetal, aluminium, and in a variety of finishes, such as Berlin blacked, galvanised, tinned, nickel-plated, electro-brassed, antique brassed, antique copper, electro-coppered, copper-oxydised, electro-silvered, and blued. The range of sizes is not so great in these fancy finishes.
TYPES. Countersunk head, raised head, and round head are the types mostly used. Size is taken from the position shown by arrows. Raised heads are frequently used with screw cups, which increase gripping area and give a neater appearance.
SIZES. Screws are classified by length and gauge. Illustration above shows from where length is taken. Gauge is the diameter of the shank and is the same in all lengths of screw. For instance, a 1-in. 9-gauge screw would have the same diameter and size of head as a 2-in. 9-gauge screw. Gauges range from 0000 to 50, but those from 4 up to 12 are most commonly used. Diagram shows five common gauges in actual size. [Ed note: The images here will resize to your device; they are not actual size] Order screws this way: ” 1 gross 1½-in. 9s, countersunk, iron.” It is always cheaper to buy by the gross than dozen.
SCREW HOLE SIZES. Two sizes of holes are needed when screwing – a thread hole and a shank hole. The former is the hole into which the screw bites its way, and should be smaller than the over-all diameter of the shank. The clearance hole should be a trifle fuller than the shank diameter. The table on the following page gives the various gauges of screws and the sizes required for the clearance and thread holes. A certain amount of latitude is possible. Softwoods will take smaller size of thread hole than hardwoods.
LUBRICATION. Lubricate screws before driving them in. It eases the work and prevents rusting. Vaseline is excellent. Be careful of mutton fat and Russian tallow, as the salt in them may cause corrosion.
FINDING THE GAUGE OF A SCREW. If you are uncertain of the gauge of a screw this simple method will give the exact answer in a few moments. Measure across the head of the screw, counting the measurement in sixteenths of an inch; double this number and subtract two. This is the gauge.
For example: a No. 10 screw (independent of length) will measure 3/8 in. or 6/16 in. This multiplied by two is 12/16 in.; less two is 10/16 in., or No. 10.
Take another case: the screw head measures 4-1/2 sixteenths; multiply by two=9; less two is 7, which is the screw gauge.
The table below gives the various gauges of screws and the sizes of the clearance and thread holes. It has been compiled from information supplied by Messrs. Nettlefold & Sons, Ltd.
When a long brass screw has to be driven into a hard wood it is advisable to drive in an iron screw of the same size first, as otherwise the resistance may cause the brass screw to snap off. Once the iron screw has been inserted it can be withdrawn and replaced by the brass screw.
The following is excerpted from Nancy R. Hiller’s “Making Things Work: Tales from A Cabinetmaker’s Life.” Hiller’s funny and occasionally delightfully crass stories tell of her years as a professional cabinetmaker who relished both the highs and the lows of the job.
“How much time do you spend in the shop, and how much in writing?” asked a friend of a friend who’d waved me over to sit with him at a holiday party. He’d noticed my bio in the list of contributors to an area magazine and knew I’d written a couple of books.
“I pretty much write in my spare time,” I said. “Mainly on weekends, if work in the shop doesn’t require my presence there. The books in effect pay nothing. The magazines at least pay something, but it’s not enough to cover my overhead and operating expenses, let alone live on.”
When I really cranked out articles for the local magazine where this acquaintance had seen my bio, I could make about $15 an hour. But this calculus relates to net income, not the gross revenue required to maintain a business – and certainly not my cabinetmaking business. It doesn’t matter whether I’m writing, sleeping, or working billable hours; a host of fixed and related expenses still have to be paid.
“Oh, please,” he said dismissively. “What kind of overhead and operating expenses do you have? You work from home and have no employees.”
I was taken aback. Why did he think he knew anything about my business? We scarcely knew each other. Did he think I was posturing as a professional while secretly just “crafting” in my garage?
“You know,” he added, rolling his eyes. “I used to do what you do.” He’d mentioned once that he had worked briefly as a carpenter during what he called his hippie youth; as part of this personal exploration he’d tried his hand at cabinetmaking before concluding that, while he loved the work itself, doing it for a living involved more tedium and less creative freedom than he could bear. Some years later he got a job as assistant art director at a major magazine and worked his way up to a well-paid position, from which he had recently retired. He pushed his chair back from the table and walked away without giving me a chance to respond.“
“Tosser,” I said under my breath as he sought out someone else to use as sounding board for his oversized ego. Then again, I realized, I had no idea how I would have responded had he stayed. If he really was that ignorant of the costs involved in operating a microenterprise – aboveboard, mind you, not under the table – a meaningful, non-defensive response would take some time for me to articulate, not to mention a willingness on his part to listen.
I grabbed his unused napkin and pulled a pen out of my bag. The numbers were fresh in my head; I’d spent the previous weekend going through the year’s accounts to get a jump on tax preparation.
“Overhead and operating expenses, 2014,” I wrote at the top of the napkin. That pompous jerk was not going to get away so easily. Between bites of salad Ilisted the categories I could remember, adding a few explanatory notes:
• “Business insurance (coverage of shop building and contents, liability, goods in transit, etc.) • Equipment rental (e.g., trailers for delivering large jobs) • Health insurance. (Many people whose health insurance premiums are subsidized by their employer have NO CLUE what it costs. Mine is $506 a month for so-called “wellness coverage,” i.e. I have to pay for almost everything out of pocket, and with a $6,000 deductible. My husband and I are both self-employed, so we each pay through the nose.) • Permits (e.g., for parking in our highly regulated city) • Accountant’s fees • Mileage
At this point I realized I had lapsed into completely irrational behavior. He would never read such a list, not to mention the parenthetical notes, which were likely to grow in length now that I was getting warmed up. But perhaps the sheer number of items listed would at least impress on him that I run a business with real-world operating expenses. So I continued writing.
• Packing & shipping • Website-related expenses • Office supplies & printing • Subscriptions to trade publications • Disposal of non-recyclable, non-compostable shop & jobsite waste • Phone & internet at shop • Dues to professional organizations • Shop utilities (electricity & water; the insurance industry now pretty much refuses to cover woodworking shops that are heated by means of a woodstove, and there is no way I’m going to run a business like this one without insurance) • Repair & maintenance of equipment; replacement blades, cutters, etc. • Bank charges (e.g., the cost of checks) for business account • Business travel expenses; I do sometimes teach, speak, & deliver furniture out of state. (These are not vacations, like those publishing-world boondoggles you brag about at cocktail parties.They are bona fide working trips.) • Business tangible property tax • Professional photography for the portfolio, when I can afford it • Taxes related to payroll: state unemployment tax, Medicare & Social Security matching taxes, etc. Years ago, my accountant advised me to organize my business as a Subchapter-S corporation instead of continuing as a self-employed proprietor.”
My hand was cramping, so I put down the pen and took a sip of cabernet. The cheese board at this bash was always a vision of abundance. I added a wedge of crumbly aged cheddar and some crackers to my plate – along with the wine, a perfect combination. By this time I had completely covered the napkin on both sides, but I sensed that I was far from finished. Grabbing a couple more napkins from the buffet, I got back to work.
“All of the above (and more) must be covered before I pay myself a penny. And this is not including investment in new tools, machinery, etc., which amounts to thousands of dollars. In 2014 the above expenses came to just over $20,000. I don’t know…maybe that’s chump change to you. Not to me.”
“And yes, my shop is behind my house. But I no longer live in the house. I had to move out during the recession, which absolutely gutted my business. During the worst year, my gross sales (i.e.,including materials) were $17,000. I slashed the overhead and everything else to the bone. I relied on my credit card to pay lots of bills, a debt that took the following two years to pay off. I’m incredibly lucky that my boyfriend at the time – now my husband – invited me to move in with him; at least that way I no longer had to pay for all my living expenses on one decimated income.”
“That year from hell, I obviously could not even pay myself minimum wageafter covering the overheads. You’re probably wondering why I didn’t just go out and get a couple of jobs – you know, bagging groceries, cleaning toilets at the office supply store. (BTW, there were none of those jobs available. Because recession.) Believe me, I thought about it. One friend, a nationally recognized furniture artisan, confided that he was seriously contemplating a job flipping burgers because he wasn’t getting orders. Another put his business in a holding pattern and relied on his wife to support him (he was lucky she could). But I calculated that doing spec pieces and writing would be a worthwhile investment in future business opportunities, even if I had to rely on my credit card to make that investment. Thank God my bet paid off.”
“I have been renting my house out to cover the mortgage & property taxes. You probably think this means I have Even. More. Income. But no. Renting the house increased the monthly payment because I no longer qualified for the homestead tax exemption. Also, insurance rates for a rented property are quite a bit higher than for one that’s owner-occupied. So the income from rent just barely covers the monthly payment. But at least I still have my shop, for which I am profoundly grateful.”
“Don’t get me wrong. I could, in fact, make more money if I only worked in the shop seven days a week and didn’t do the writing. But going back and forth between these kinds of work is critical to my sanity.”
“All of which is to say that yes, I do have overheads and operating expenses.”
I folded the napkins in half, put them in my pocket, and made my way through the crowded room over to the dessert table. I was balancing a slice of chocolate hazelnut torte on a cake knife when I spotted him spooning tiramisu seductively into the mouth of a woman who looked young enough to be his daughter. I stood there holding the torte on the knife while she closed her lips around the spoon and shut her eyes with an expression of orgasmic delight. Once she had recovered I walked over and tapped him on the shoulder. “Rafi,”I said, pulling the napkins out of my pocket, “I have something for you.” I unfolded them and laid them on the table in front of him.
“OK,” he said distractedly as he scooped up another spoonful for his friend, who seemed to be incapable of feeding herself even though she was old enough to drink wine. “Thanks.”
I happened to pass their table on my way out a half-hour later. The napkins were just where I’d placed them, but crumpled now, the ink smudged into a dark blue blur. Seeing me roll my eyes, a man at the next table said, “I don’t know what was written on those napkins, but it sure must have been funny. The guy sitting there was reading it to his daughter – or was she his girlfriend? – and at one point she laughed so hard she spat out a mouthful of pudding. Geez, what a sticky mess.”
The following is excerpted from “Honest Labour: The Charles H. Hayward Years,” a collection of the storied editor’s Chips From the Chisel, column, which ran in the front of every issue of The Woodworker for three decades.
What our full powers are—we shall never know exactly this side of the grave, but we can have a wonderfully interesting time trying to find out.
There are times when, looking back on our lives, we get a sudden sense of pattern. The kind of thing that happens when an artist, who has been plotting out a design in a series of small dots, which to the eye of the beholder look quite unrelated, joins them up with lines and curves and we become aware of the design, which he will enrich with colour and other decoration till the whole thing glows with life. It seems as though, in our own lives, the tiny dots, the small pointers which give direction to the whole, are the choices we make, those deliberate choices which in however small a way are strong enough to give some new direction to our activities or to the thoughts governing our activities which will end by colouring the whole.
The lines may not always be clear. There are always forces combining to pull us away from any deliberate choice. We may feel we need to make some real creative effort in our lives and to take up woodwork seriously in our spare time, having already dabbled in it a little, so that we become considerable craftsmen. But time is not elastic and the claims of family and friends and our own tendency to take the line of least resistance can easily divert us altogether from our programme unless we firmly dig in our heels. There is a world of difference between the just claims of others in daily living and the tendency to annex us altogether. You know the kind of thing—it is always happening. Only the other day I heard a group of youngsters discussing a popular boy, Jack, who had refused to accompany them on some projected expedition because he was studying for an examination. “Oh,” said one of his friends, “He must come. We’ll see to that.” I happened to know that examination meant a lot to Jack, who is desperately anxious to be a doctor, and wondered who would win. It is not easy for a popular sixteen-year-old to shut his head in textbooks, but that is the kind of decision in some shape or form that has so often to be made if we are going to achieve anything at all, and not only when we are young.
It is always easier to take the line of least resistance and go with the crowd, with the danger then that, instead of a design, the pattern of our lives may come to resemble a child’s meaningless scribble. We have to make choices and stick to them, even when it is not easy, if we are going to get any kind of satisfaction out of the business of living.
It is as though each of us is king of a little kingdom, which is ourselves. We have to keep control, prevent undue encroachments, give away to just claims, know when to relax and when to be firm, to keep a check over the foes within, which are our own weaknesses of temperament that, unchecked, could soon produce anarchy, and keep a particularly watchful eye on the thieves and snatchers of our time under whatever guise they come, time being the most precious commodity we have. Being human we shall fail often, but so long as we continue to make the effort, and in proportion to the amount of that effort, something worth while will evolve. The complete enthusiast, which includes all men of genius, has far less of a problem. His enthusiasm shows itself in a passion for his chosen work which refuses to be daunted by obstacles or hindrances, but must always be practising and experimenting. The custom of late years of publishing separate details of some of the pictures painted by the world’s greatest artists has been particularly revealing in this respect. It enables one to see the loving care, the passionate interest and powers of observation which have gone into the minutest part of a picture, the veins of a hand, the shimmer of light on silk and velvet, a dog quivering with excitement, a chandelier solidly and exactly portrayed, in all and every manner of thing each tiny detail perfect of its kind, and each representing not only the time spent in immediate execution but the hours beyond count which the artist has spent in acquiring his skill by drawing and painting everything within reach. For many of us enthusiasm is more fitful, wonderful when it comes sweeping us along on a glowing tide but liable to leave us stranded high and dry, our skill a mere adequacy or a job half completed. And it is at that point where determination has to step in to fill the gap.
But it is worth it. Only so can we hope to come within sight of our full powers, of our capacity for living. What these are in their fullness we shall never know exactly this side of the grave, but we can have a wonderfully interesting time trying to find out. Because the only way of finding out is by doing things and keeping on doing things as creatively and imaginatively as we can, and not scattering ourselves too much. Always remembering that we have to be like the gardener, who sacrifices most of his rosebuds by careful pruning in order to develop the few buds of his choice to their fullest extent. In a limited lifetime one cannot do everything, but it is safe to say that the choice of a craft like woodwork is sufficient to send one’s interests stemming out in all manner of directions, adding enough colour to one’s pattern of life to give a wonderful zest to living.
FIG. 221. Chest, dated 1724: 1. Front view; 2. Side view; 3. Transverse section A–B, Pilistvere, Kõo vald, ERM A 350:11.
The following is excerpted from “Woodworking in Estonia.”The author, Ants Viires, devoted his life to recording the hand-tool folkways of his country without a shred of romanticism. Viires combined personal interviews and direct observation of work habits with archaeological evidence and a thorough scouring of the literature in his country and surrounding nations.
If all this sounds like a dry treatise, it’s not. “Woodworking in Estonia” is an important piece of evidence in understanding how our ancestors worked wood and understood it more intimately than we do. Viires records in great detail everything from the superstitions surrounding the harvesting of wood (should you whistle in the forest?) to detailed descriptions of how the Estonians dried the wood, bent it, steamed it and even buried it in horse dung to shape it for their needs.
Viires covers, in detail, the hand tools used by the Estonian, including many that will be unfamiliar to moderns (a beehive turner?). He then discusses all the different products Estonians made for their own use and for sale in the markets, including bent-wood boxes, chairs, chests, tables, sleds, carriages, spinning wheels, spoons, tobacco pipes, bowls and beer tankards.
Of older products of woodwork, the coffin and chest merit special mention, since already in feudal times a variety of methods were being employed for joining their sides, legs and the lid.
Priidu Anise (b. 1854) from Kaarma makes the following interesting comments concerning coffin and chest production.27
“They were always made of spruce or pine, which was soft and smooth. Chests were made to order by the village carpenter from wood supplied by the customer. The boards were also provided by the peasant placing the order.
“There were some people who made the complete chest at home. But clothes chests were a carpenter’s job; it always had to be more accomplished and so it was. I used to charge a basket of rye for making a grain chest; for a clothes chest – one and a half baskets of rye. The wood was provided by the customer…. The trunk of the pine was split in two, and if it was a thick one, the halves were split in two again. Of these you could get two wide boards and two narrow ones, for lids…. Such boards were put on the block and the edges cut clean, first one then the other.…”
The split boards were left to dry for a couple of years, first on the bathhouse and, just before use, in a room near smoke. This kept them from warping. The dried boards were taken to the carpenter “who went over them with a plane.” If the boards were wide, two were enough for the side, or base, of the chest. “I planed the sides of the boards until they were even, knocked in the tenons, and joined them together. Once the sides and the bottom were thus assembled, I marked the legs and cut the grooves and the holes for them.” (In cutting the groove “the work was done with the gimlet, and a chisel was used for cleaning up.”)28
“Now I put the whole thing together, first the ends, then the base and the front and back.“ Then came the making of the joints, which had to be strong enough to hold up the chest.
“The joining proceeded thus: The board which went through the leg was cut into and a wedge made of spruce was driven in…. This was an old method. In my time they began to put in tenons and join it that way.29 A hole was cut across the tenon with a fine gimlet, and the joint was sealed with a peg made of oak.” (“The bottom of the chest was placed so that the board on the side was ridged, or grooved, and thus it was joined (see Fig. 221). In larger chests an additional cross-piece was inserted, which went through to both side boards. If large tenons – 4″ (10 cm) in size – were used, it was not necessary to apply a cross-piece.”
To secure the top “the two rear legs were made higher, and cut so that the top would be forced onto them. Here also, oak pins were used…. Oak pins were strong and kept the top in position. Two more pins about 2″ (5 cm) in size were placed, and then the top rested firmly.”
FIG. 222. Chest with gable-type lid, presumably made before the Northern War. Rõuge, Kasaritsa vald. Somi village, ERM A 101-40.
The last stage was the smoothing and cutting away of all protruding ends. “All were cut away, from the top and the legs, with a sharp knife and a small plane where necessary.”
Altogether the work was completed with a minimum of tools, available in every peasant household: “An axe, knife, chisel, gimlet and an occasional plane… the edges were cleaned with a draw knife.” For making clothes chests a curved chisel was needed, and a special plane for the mouldings. The moulding planes in Kaarma came into use in 1870.
“It was first seen in the tool shop of the estate carpenter.” But it must be assumed that carpenters used such planes already in the early part of the 19th century, or even previously, for chest making; the museums abound in exhibits with moulding on sides and legs, obviously made by moulding planes.
FIG. 223. Chest with curved lid. Tõstamaa, Seli vald. ERM 4933.
The above methods of chest making must be considered general for the whole of Estonia, since the same features are found in all chests in the country, beginning with the oldest known one (1724) as may by be seen clearly in Fig. 221.
Chests with pillars in the four corners were common in Mediterranean countries in ancient times, from where they made their way through the Balkans and Central Europe, reaching as far as Scandinavia in the north. In the northern countries chests of the model described above appeared already in the 12th century.30 In Sweden, farmers made their own grain and flour chests until modern times.31
In the Baltic countries pillared chests are not commonplace. Apart from Estonia they were known to some extent among the Votyaks, as in Livonia and northern Latvia (Vidzeme).32 In other parts of Latvia, as well as in Lithuania and Belarus, the board chest with a lid that could be locked was popular until well into the 19th century. Specially decorated chests were used for clothes.33 Only in Pskov, where there was a strong element of Baltic nationals, was a variety of chests to be found, including the Estonian type. It is not unlikely that the chests reached Pskov parallel with their development in Estonia in the 19th century. In other parts of Russia chests of a different structure (“sunduk”) dating to the 17th century were used.34
FIG. 224. Lid with ridge on the top. Tartu-Maarja, Väägvere village. ERM vv.-akt 234:1.
The term for the pillar-cornered chest is closely linked in all Baltic-Finnish languages (Estonian – “kirst;” Finnish, Votyak – “kirstu;” Karelian – “kirsto;” Izhorian – “kirštu;” Livonian – “kiršt”), and was carried over into Old Russian – “kersta;” Latvian – “šķirsts”).35
On the basis of the ancient terms and in the light of archaeological discoveries in Scandinavia, it may be assumed that the type of chest as described above was known in Estonia before the 13th century.
Our impression of the Estonian chest so far is somewhat incomplete. We have admittedly noted that the basic structure of chests in Estonia was fairly uniform throughout the country; however, certain distinctions in detail and outward appearance exist between various districts. The most significant differences concern the lid. In the 19th century the gable-type lid was most in use in southeastern Estonia (Fig. 222). This type was produced by the Haanja home industry until the trunk and commode made their appearance in the 1880s. This was also the case further south, in Vidzeme.36 Similarly, in Pskov and other Peipus areas, as well as further north among the Votyaks, it was equally popular. The origin of the kind of lid can be traced back to ancient sarcophagi, and it is therefore considered to be the oldest type of lid in Estonia.37
FIG. 225. Chest (bridal chest). Pöide. Ardla village, Drawing from Archives of State Committee for Building and Architecture.
Chests with a curved lid, which in central Europe were associated with the Gothic period, predominated in Estonia in the 19th century. They were already popular in the early 18th century (see Fig. 221).
Various methods were employed for the decoration of these lids, and chests generally, including poker work (Fig. 223). In eastern Estonia, e.g. in the former Tartumaa region, it was customary to cover the top of the lid with a narrow board forming a ridge in the center (Fig. 224). In Saaremaa and Hiiumaa the edges of the chest were covered with ornamented boards (Fig. 225), which is obviously a characteristic feature of Swedish origin.38 This meant that the cross-piece was also on the outside, while the chest construction on the mainland placed the cross-piece inside the chest. All these distinctions, however, are not confined only to certain territories, and the same features may be found anywhere in the country.
27 Description taken from KV 79, 108-121. The additions in the parentheses date from KT 71, 45 onwards. Both the descriptions have been noted down by A. Toomessalu.
28 There were also more specialized tools, such as the croze and the grooving planes, but only a few village carpenters had them (Cf. p. 68 and Fig. 51:2).
29 Actually, use of pins was typical even at the oldest coffins (see Fig. 221). They have already been used in the Swedish 12th century coffins (Svensson, Figs. 5, 19-20, 34–36).
30 Erixson, Möbelkultur, pp. 126–128; Shoultz, p. 6; Karlson p. 91 and the following.; Svensson, Figs. 1–5, 17–21, 31–38.
31 Erixon, Möbelkultur, p. 127.
32 LE, p. 931; data received concerning Vidzeme from L. Dumpe, a scholar of the LVM.
33 Bielenstein, p. 235 onward; Figs. 166–168; Бломквист, p. 424 onward. Fig. 116; data of V. Milius, a Lithuanian candidate of history.
34 Бломквист, p. 426 onward.
35 Kalima, Balttil. Lainasanat, p. 118; Toivonen, p. 200; Aben p. 206.
36 LVM, chests with gable-type lid 21246 (Valga County), 21246 and 21247 (unknown origin); also LVM archives, folder 2440 (chests from Cēsis County).
37 Põldmäe, pp. 42-44.
38 See Erixon, Möbelkultur, p. 127; Schoultz, p. 10 and Fig. 10.
Andy Glenn is the author of the newly released “Backwoods Chairmakers: In Search of the Appalachian Ladderback Chairmaker.” He found more than 20 of them and earned their trust then, beautifully and authentically through words and photos, told the stories of their lives and their work, which has been handed down through generations for more than 200 years.
Andy and his sister, Mary Jo, helping their grandpa, George Fike, with a new set of cellar doors.
Andy grew up among fields of corn and soybeans on patchworked land so fertile that in 1808 Ohioans named it Richland County. His grandfather George Fike lived in an old Victorian farmhouse on about 150 acres in nearby Ashland Twp., Ohio, and had a wood and metal fabrication shop, where he worked on anything needed for the house and farm. Andy’s grandfather Lawrence Glenn was the town milkman in Ashland County, Ohio. In his basement shop he would turn old milk crates into boxes and small gifts for family.
Mary Lou and George Fike with Andy, on a rocking horse that Grandpa George made.
Projects Andy made as a child with his grandfather, Lawrence Glenn.
Andy’s family – parents, both teachers, and a younger sister and brother – lived on 11 acres. His mother had horses. Each year his father would raise six to 10 head of black Angus beef for neighbors or community members who put in an order. Andy participated in 4-H and had sheep. They had dogs.
“It was just a wonderful time,” Andy says.
Although Andy fed animals in the morning and evening, and helped care for the farm, he says he grew up surrounded by Amish and Mennonite families with children that “could run laps around me with their knowledge of things.”
Andy loved sports. He played baseball, soccer and basketball, and his parents encouraged it all, from a young age through high school.
“They’d sign me up for the local travel teams and we’d travel around the state and out of state. Now that I’m a parent, I realize how committed they were to providing opportunities.”
In the summers Andy worked as an extra set of hands for his best friend, Troy’s dad, Phil Perry, who ran a carpentry crew. Andy and Troy would spend many late nights in Phil’s basement shop, building things.
“And if we had questions, Phil would come down and give us some guidance,” Andy says. “Show us how to run a router, safe ways to run a table saw.”
Andy’s Uncle Galen made him this blanket chest as a high school graduation gift.
Andy attended Walsh University then transferred to The College of Wooster his sophomore year as a business economics major. He also helped coach his high school’s freshman boys’ basketball team, not minding the hour drive each way. He loved his college experience.
“College always seemed like it was going to be what I did,” Andy says. “My parents were the first to go to college and they really encouraged me to go to college. I suppose I was a bit short-sighted – I knew I was going to go to college but I didn’t necessarily know what was going to happen after that.”
From Business to Building
The table Andy made for his wife, Sarah, as a wedding gift.
Shortly after college graduation, Andy married his high school sweetheart, Sarah. His wedding gift to Sarah was a dining table, built in Phil’s shop. Together they moved to Boston, where Sarah, a classical violinist, attended graduate school at the Longy School of Music, just north of Harvard Square in Cambridge. Andy took a job as the business director of a small Christian high school, where he also helped with the basketball teams and coached JV soccer – a team made up of players who were fulfilling the school’s sports requirement, which made the whole experience fun but also absurd at times, Andy says, laughing.
“I thought the job was perfect,” he says. “It married my interests, my degree and my faith. I thought it would be a perfect job. And it was a nice job. But after a short time there I thought, I’m not in the right setting.”
Andy and Sarah lived in a small apartment in Somerville, Massachusetts, and Andy remembers one day coming home and showing Sarah his hands. They were smooth – not a single callus in sight.
“I just kind of realized I was chasing numbers all day and then I would never catch them and then we’d come back the next day and chase them again. And I was just kind of out of place.”
“I loved every moment of it,” he says. “Just to be surrounded by all these people who are passionate about furniture and excited about it in much the same way. It was a wonderful two years.”
Andy particularly loved the instructors, including Dan Faia, still a close friend and mentor, and Alex Krutsky, who recently passed away.
“Alex was just the most charming man and he had a real ornery sense of humor,” Andy says. “One day I came in first thing and I was doing a glue-up. I had clamps everywhere. I was sweating and moving and it wasn’t going well and I was getting anxious. And Alex, he came up the stairs in the bench room and came over the way he did and had this little smile on his face. And he just goes, ‘The reason we use clamps is so we don’t have to hold the wood together with our hands while the glue dries.’ It was a joke, but it was just perfect in the moment because I was failing miserably and he wasn’t there to help, but to add a little joke. And he would have helped me if I needed it. Now, at least once or twice a week, I pick up a clamp and smile about Alex.”
Six months later, a live-in caretaker position opened up at NBSS. Andy and Sarah moved into a little, quirky, third- and fourth-floor apartment inside the school, and Andy served as caretaker for five years.
“Everything about it was fun,” he says.
For five years Andy managed the old buildings, attending to triggered motion sensors, water main breaks and sewer fires. A job perk was using open space as he pleased, as long as he remained somewhat unseen. This provided him shop space to build. During this time Andy also taught some classes at NBSS and worked part-time job at a furniture repair shop called Second Life in Charlestown, Massachusetts.
During this time Sarah was working for the Boston Symphony’s education department. Their daughter, Ruby, was born in 2011. Ruby’s nursery was a large closet (they previously used it as an office) in their NBSS apartment. Fourteen months later their son, Francis, was born. They loved Boston but they always knew they’d eventually leave. With two kids, they decided it was time.
To Maine, Kentucky & Back Again They moved to Maine, a place they always hoped to call home, and Andy spent time dropping off résumés at various shops. He found work at Front Street Shipyard in Belfast.
“It was a very fun job but it was a J-O-B, right from the beginning, because it was all new to me,” Andy says. “People think of wispy shavings on wooden boats but it was really like grinding fiberglass off tugboat refits. It was a dirty job, fun, but dirty.”
Several months later a custom commercial cabinetry shop (Phi Home Designs – the name has since changed, now Hay Runner) called him with an opening. He was the go-to furniture guy, working on projects that passed his bench. When there was no furniture work to be done he’d help out the cabinet crew, which, he says, was enjoyable and eye-opening – the materials, approach and methods were all different. He stayed on for about three and a half years.
In 2017, a position opened up in Berea College Student Craft’s woodcraft program, and Andy and Sarah thought it might be nice to live closer to family for a bit. Andy applied, was accepted, and they moved to Berea, Kentucky.
“The college was a totally new experience for me,” Andy says. “Being a woodworker in academia, that made my head spin for a little while. But the actual job was great.”
As the Director of Woodcraft, he worked with students all day, teaching them how to make the college’s craft and furniture items.
“Each year, a number of people came into the woodshop who had never woodworked before and I got to guide them through their first woodworking experiences,” he says. “And a number of them, you could just see it – they loved the shop and they’d come in on their off hours and you could just see that build and grow.”
Former students will reach out to him from time to time, with photos of walking sticks they recently made or news of how their career in woodworking, born in Berea, is going.
During this time Andy was also tapped to help get The Woodworking School at Pine Croft, formerly the Kelly Mehler School of Woodworking, owned by Kelly and Teri Mehler, back up and running.
“Kelly and Teri were very kind to our family from the moment we moved into town,” Andy says. “Kelly was working with the college with the possibility of selling the school, selling his property – I just kind of knew of it. And then the college did purchase the Mehler’s place, and as we were getting the school started up again, that’s where my role came into play.”
But as much as Andy was enjoying his work, Kentucky didn’t feel like home. He, Sarah and the kids all missed Maine. He remembers one day he and Sarah were driving around Berea, searching the radio.
“After scanning all the stations Sarah said, ‘I wished we lived somewhere that had a classical station.’ That resonated with me,” Andy says. “Our local stations played mountain bluegrass – which is beautiful – but no classical, and in that moment it felt like we were misfits for the place.”
So in 2021, they began looking for a new place to settle. The housing market at the time felt impossible. But then, serendipity: With a better understanding of what Andy and Sarah were looking for, their Realtor wrote and said her parents’ house, which wasn’t on the market yet, seemed like a good fit. Andy and Francis took a road trip to Waldoboro, Maine, and saw that it was a perfect fit.
Andy’s shop.
“It’s an old cape, 1859, and there are projects, nonstop projects on this place, which is why it was in our price range and why we could get into it,” Andy says. “And just the amazing providential piece of it was that he had built this shop space in 2013. He was a boatbuilder, so he had a few boats in there, but it was a board-and-batten shell. And I’ve been able to keep building it out ever since I got into it.”
Today the kids are enrolled in a small school. Sarah, a creative like Andy, works a couple of different jobs, and Andy builds chairs, makes custom furniture, sells chair kits and teaches. It works.
Until recently, Andy would put time into “Backwoods Chairmakers” in the morning, “the best time to write,” he says. “It’s just been in the last few months that that hasn’t been on the front of my mind and the back of mind at all times.”
He’s in the shop for as many hours as he can be, at least until mid-afternoon, depending on the day. The flexibility is a gift, allowing Andy to end his workday as late as 6:30 p.m. or as early as 2:30 p.m., to pick up the kids from school and take them to various activities when needed. Saturdays are typically a half day of work.
“The rhythm and the way it’s going right now works for us,” he says.
Andy also enjoys being on the road and teaching.
“I get a lot of joy from teaching in the sense that there is a connection when working with people who have their own goals, who are getting started in the craft or who are excited about a new project or skill,” he says. “I get to participate in that experience.”
On Building a Book
For about a year and a half Andy traveled to chairmakers’ homes. He’d visit, take notes, with permission record interviews, then come back home and write as much as he could about the visit and the experience.
“I was obviously and clearly an outsider visiting these chairmakers in Appalachia,” he says. “I kind of knew that right from the beginning. What I didn’t know was that Lost Art Press and this book idea really carried no weight. The chairmakers were intrigued by it, but it was fairly abstract.”
He learned some things along the way, including the necessity of a doorstep explanation versus a phone call from states away.
“The first couple of chairmaking visits I’d get all my gear out, right as I was getting out of the car,” he says. “That was the wrong approach because we didn’t have any rapport. Slowly I learned I needed to get out and we needed to just sit and talk for a while. And then the chairmaker could size me up and size up the project and decide if and how they wanted to contribute. And from there we could get going.”
He wanted the chairmakers to know that he wasn’t writing a quick one-off story with a photograph attached. Rather, he was going to be in touch again to make sure he got things right, to make sure he was telling the story fully and correctly.
Newberry and Sons. Red Boiling Springs, Tennessee.
“Usually, as we would sit and talk at the beginning, we’d reach a point where the chairmaker would say something along the lines of, ‘Well, we better get going if we’re going to do this.’ And that was my signal that it was time to work,” he says.
At first Andy had a collection of essays that didn’t relate. But once the traveling came to an end he was able to look at the essays as a whole and find commonalities, forming the book’s structure.
He also noted different themes: design, family, contemporary building methods, marketing.
“Each maker kind of had these threads that they emphasized,” he says.
Once he identified them, Andy would tug on those threads during the writing process, and call each chairmaker to follow up with questions along those lines.
He also looked for repetition. Every chairmaker mentioned dry rungs and wet posts, and as such, Andy had written about dry rungs and wet posts a dozen times. So he began paring what had already been said to make the stories more interesting.
Turning in the manuscript and photographs to Lost Art Press prompted a bit of withdrawal.
“That book was with me daily for years, and now it doesn’t need me anymore,” Andy says. “But I loved the travel piece. The appreciation for those chairs took me places that I never would have traveled to without this project. It took me into communities and into back lanes and to meet people that I wouldn’t have met otherwise. So there was just always an excitement around it, around travel and meeting other people. And it always felt like we had chairs as our commonality and we’d always come back to an appreciation of these chairs. That gave me a great place to start from as they shared their messages for making.”
A New Way of Thinking about the Intersection of Work & Life Although the book is complete, it’s still very much present in Andy’s daily life.
“I know it’s affected my work,” he says. “I’m by no means an Appalachian chairmaker but I can see the influence. I’ve been thinking about this every day for quite a while now. So it can’t help but permeate some of the work I’m doing. I loved meeting these people who made chairmaking, woodworking craft, furniture making, a part of their life. And it really changed how I quantify work.”
Andy used to think of work as part-time, full-time, 40 hours a week.
“Their lives had none of those parameters around it,” he says. “For a number of them, there were times to make chairs and then there were times when other things were more pressing. And that might mean because the shop is cold in the winter and so winters are for other things and recharging. And in the spring you make chairs. Or it gets really hot and so the summer is for gardening and other work and in the cooler periods you get into the chairs. So I stopped considering it as part-time, full-time, and I just started looking at it more as a part of life.”
Some examples of Andy’s work.
In addition to chairmaking, custom furniture builds and teaching, Andy reads a lot. He enjoys photography. He deeply appreciates the wildness, quietness and ruralness of Maine. He appreciates long nights by the woodstove.
“Our kids are at an age where they’re quite active and we’re about with them,” he says. “On Wednesdays I’m a goalie for a co-ed soccer team. Everyone here is like, ‘Oh, hockey!’ And I’m like, ‘No, soccer,’” he laughs.
He also finds that time spent in his shop and teaching complement each other wonderfully.
“I do love working in the shop by myself,” he says. “But after a stretch of that I want to teach. I want to be around other energy, other ideas. I enjoy that I get to teach and share and then come back to the shop and recharge, explore some new ideas and then go back out and teach again.”
For the first time Andy plans on teaching some classes in his shop, this spring. The 40′ x 30′ building has two floors. Currently the second floor is being used for storage as he outfits the first. He’s built walls, installed lighting and electricity, and he’s starting to get benches and machines, things he’s been acquiring since moving back to Maine, in place. Although he’s always had a bench, even in his apartments, he’s been spoiled, he says, due to the access he’s had to the shops everywhere he’s worked.
“I have more ideas than money,” he says, laughing. “I know, that’s everyone. I see how this will all come together in the end. I just keep working on it step by step.”
As of this writing Andy’s working on a custom timber-frame style bed out of large beams of red oak. And he’s working on a chair – he’s always working on a chair, either for himself or someone else.
“I really just love the process of making a chair,” he says. “Everything about it from the idea to the physical process of handling the materials, splitting it out, shaving them if I’m making a greenwood chair, all the way to putting the finish on and seeing how that chair comes together at the very end. I just really enjoy making, I think.”
Andy says he’s always been drawn to something chairmaker Curtis Buchanan said about 15 years ago.
Andy’s family – Andy, Francis, Ruby and Sarah.
“He just described his work and how family is close by and important to him, and how his shop is behind his house and how everything is kind of linked together and intertwined, and I found that appealing,” Andy says. “I enjoy having the shop behind the house and being able to work from home. Other things are more important but the shop is right here for work where it fits. And sometimes that’s more hours out here, sometimes it’s less. It’s just here as it needs to be.”