A reader found an error in the full-size patterns for “The Stick Chair Book.” Here’s the fix.
The plans for the Six-stick Comb-Back were scaled down slightly by the printer. None of the other five patterns are scaled down – they are correct. We’re not sure how this happened, but oh well. The patterns for the six-stick chair show the seat at 19” wide instead of 20”. The other parts on that page are also scaled down slightly.
The fixes:
Ignore the error. The slight scaling won’t change the chair much. I’ve made chairs with narrower seats with no problem.
Download an unscaled pattern for free via this link. Get it printed out at your local reprographics firm. And next time you’re in town I’ll buy you a coffee or beer to make up for the added expense.
Use the seat pattern for the lowback instead. It is the same size and shape. The legs are in the same place. The spindles on the seat are the same space apart (3” on centers). The only thing you’ll have to do is step off one more spindle on both sides of the spindle deck.
I have met only one magical being in my life, and his name is Jögge Sundqvist.
I’m not joking. I first met Jögge when he was teaching a class at the Marc Adams School of Woodworking, and I was amazed at his ability to charm almost anything. There were the students, of course – they had signed up for the experience. But Jögge also had a curious power over the wood in his hands, his tools and even color. Everything he does looks so simple, and yet it has an almost magical quality to it.
Perhaps we were also under his spell, but we jumped at the chance to translate Jögge’s book “Slöjd in Wood” into English. This interesting and beautiful book is not just about carving spoons, or making bowls or peg racks. It’s a different way of looking at the craft and the world. It is a direct connection to the same world that created the vernacular stick chairs I’ve been in love with for most of my life. It’s not something you can conquer by buying fancier tools or making jigs.
In fact the only path forward is to turn off the machines, pick up a branch from the forest and sit down with a knife. In time, you will find yourself becoming “not uncrafty.”
— Christopher Schwarz
The following is an excerpt from “Slöjd in Wood” by Jögge Sundqvist.
This cutting board is based on ones I saw in Norway. One side had a decoration painted on it and faced outward when it hung on the wall. The other side was the real cutting board and unpainted. A cutting board gets tough treatment. In frequent contact with water, it swells and shrinks again and again, so the wood changes in volume.
A cutting board with a glue joint cracks sooner or later. If you use a single board from the outer part of a straight-grown trunk, where the annual rings are of more or less of equal length, it warps to be slightly convex on the cutting side and is stable.
Cutting board with heart side down. You cut food on the heart side. This side is convex when it has dried, so the water drains off. It also sits steadier on the table than the bark side. The bark side of the board becomes the decorated side.
Material A blank from straight-grained birch or common alder. Ash, maple or beech are also good. Make sure that the blank isn’t twisted.
Cutting boards are good to make from leftovers from other projects. For example, when splitting out stool seats from a half log, you can use the remaining outer parts for cutting boards.
Hew away thick parts with an axe. Smooth both sides with a drawknife in the shaving horse, or with a scrub plane at the workbench. Make sure the blank isn’t twisted, and is evenly thick. It can be slightly cupped. Seal the end grain with glue and dry the board for a couple of weeks.
Drill holes for hanging or for a handle. Use a brace and auger bits. When the tip of the bit has come through on the backside, stop, turn the blank over and drill from the other side. This avoids tearout and splinters at the edges. If you want to make a handle with a larger hole, use a fret saw to saw out the shape. Clean inside the hole using a knife with a narrow blade.
Use your legs and body to give power to your planing. Good ergonomics make the result even better. Cross-grain wood can splinter. You must either clean-cut with a flat gouge or lift the plane to stop the cut and work from the other direction.
Plane the surface with a smoothing plane or use a sharp drawknife. It is when you flatten the surface that you realize the importance of a quality, straight-grained and knot-free blank. Even so, planing a wide board can be a difficult task. Think of all the slöjd makers throughout history. Rise to the challenge!
Saw and carve the overall shape. Clean-carve all end-grain wood using the can opener grip. Chamfer the edges carefully. On the bark side, chip carve a cool pattern and paint with a thin coat of oil paint. Now you suddenly have something spectacular to cut your vegetables on.
In our forthcoming illustrated book, “Cadi & the Cursed Oak,” much of the plot centers on an acorn cup.
Once there was a cup.
But it was not an ordinary cup, for it was a silver cup with an oak sleeve turned in the shape of an acorn, one hand high, as if it had been crafted for a child.
And on a winter day in Dolgellau, a small town in northwest Wales, it was Cadi who found the cup, lodged between a stone wall and her grandmother’s oak coffer.
Cadi pulled the cup until she heard a quiet “pop” muffled by the coffer’s cobwebs. A tiny split opened in the wood, smaller than the breath of a bee.
“Oh,” Cadi whispered, fearing what her grandmother would say. Cradling the cup, she examined the two silver discs attached to the wooden sleeve. One had an engraving of an oak tree above the words Ceubren yr Ellyll, and 1813. The other was engraved with a coat of arms and ASGRE LÂN DIOGEL EI PHERCHEN.
It was so lovely and so unknown, Cadi thought she might cry. Although she had never seen the cup or heard talk of it, it was beautiful and important-looking. And the tiny crack grew heavy in her mind.
Cadi and her grandmother are fictional, of course, but this cup, made by John Reilly, exists at National Museum Wales. According to the museum, “On 25 June 1824 one of Wales’s grandest 21st birthday celebrations took place for Sir Robert Williams Vaughan, the son of Merioneth’s biggest landowner. Held on the Nannau estate in Dolgellau, 200 guests sat down to an extravagant banquet … Various items produced to commemorate the event are now in the collections of Amgueddfa Cymru, including two of the six acorn-shaped toasting cups made for the occasion. They were made from the wood of the Derwen Ceubren yr Ellyll, ‘the hollow oak of the demon,’ the ancient tree at Nannau associated with Owain Glyndwr.”
Many objects made from the cursed oak exist in Wales still today.
What happened to it, to the tree? Cadi asked.
“A terrible storm, in 1813,” said her grandmother, who began to walk again. “A man named Sir Richard Colt Hoare visited here. Sir Richard was a wealthy man, an antiquarian. He also loved plants. He collected exotic plants, he planted thousands of trees, and he loved to draw them. While at Nannau, Sir Richard became enchanted with the blasted oak. By this time it measured 28 feet around and was more than 900 years old. So he sketched it. That very night, lightning struck the tree and destroyed it. The remaining wood was collected and quite a few things were made from it – tables, candlesticks, picture frames and some lovely stirrup cups, set in silver and shaped like acorns. I own one of the cups, although it appears to have gone missing.”
Cadi dared not move.
“There are two silver discs on it, opposite each other. One disc says ceubren yr ellyll, the hollow oak of the demon. The other, ASGRE LÂN DIOGEL EI PHERCHEN, a good conscience is the best shield.”
Cadi’s grandmother turned and looked at her.
Legend says if you drink from it, the tree’s stories will haunt you.”
They walked a bit more and then Cadi quietly asked, “How do you get the dreams to stop?”
“You can’t stop stories, child,” her grandmother said. “Even bad ones. Every living thing has a story. And every story deserves to be told.”
Photo by Philip Nanney Williams
This is the actual sketching of the Nannau Oak, by Sir Richard Colt Hoare, which is part of the Stourhead House collection (National Trust). The inscription on the top of the frame says “The Nannau Oak fell to the ground 27 July 1813. This frame is made of the real wood.” The inscription on the bottom of the frame says, “Sketched by Sr Richd. C. Hoare on the morning preceding the night on which it fell.”
Victorian breakfast table, sold at Auction by Bonhams
This Victorian breakfast table, sold at auction by Bonhams in 2014, is said to be made from the Nannau Oak. It came with a printed etching of the tree and text about the tree as referenced in Sir Walter Scott’s poem, “Marmion,” framed in wood also said to be from the cursed tree.
Photo by Philip Nanney Williams
Here you can see more photos by Philip Nanney Williams, author of “Nannau: A Rich Tapestry of Welsh History,” of a book slide made in 1848. It was reportedly made from wood from the Nannau Oak supplied by the third bart’s wife, Lady Vaughan of Rhug. Philip was of wonderful assistance to me during the research phase of this book.
Photo courtesy of Philip Nanney Williams
The website nannau.wales, created by Ian King, provided a wealth of information while working on this book. There I found a transcription of a 1960s tourist guide, which included an image of candlesticks and more cups made from Nannau oak.
Photo by Philip Nanney Williams
Philip writes about these candlesticks, made from the Nannau Oak, in Chapter 3 of his book. Made in 1840, they are modeled on the chimney of the Archdeacon’s House, Bangor, where Owain Glyndŵr met with Henry Hotspur during the rebellion.
Snuff box made from the Nannau Oak, photo courtesy of Philip Nanney Williams
More objects made from the Nannau Oak, photo courtesy of Philip Nanney Williams
And according to Woolley & Wallis, this folding table has a 19th century veneered top with “Ceubren yr Ellyll,” inscribed underneath on a later turned folding base.
I get asked a lot about starting and growing a small business, mostly from woodworkers who want to make the leap from corporate life to a diet of hot dogs and crescent rolls. So this post is mostly about business, with a little woodworking thrown in.
Right after I quit my job at Popular Woodworking in 2011, I was making about $10,000 a year from Lost Art Press. To make ends meet, I was teaching, freelancing and hustling. I think I was on the road about 18 weeks that year.
Then John and I got some great news. F&W Media (owner of Popular Woodworking) wanted to carry our entire line of books. And bam – F&W immediately became our largest customer.
Things went great for about a year, but then F&W missed a payment. The company was supposed to pay our invoices within 30 days. So John called F&W’s buyer to see what was up.
“Oooooh. Sorry. Meant to tell you that we switched everyone to 60 days,” the buyer said.
Sorry, but no, John explained. F&W’s buyer relented and said: “We’ll keep you on 30 days because of our close relationship.” Meanwhile, F&W placed another huge order of books.
But F&W hadn’t relented. They’d lied. After 30 more days, F&W was behind on multiple invoices. John called the buyer.
“Oooooooh, sorry. Management decided to put everyone on 120 days. No special treatment. Sorry.”
John demanded payment, and we stopped filling F&W’s orders until we could decide what to do.
In the meantime, trouble was brewing elsewhere.
When we sell our books to our retailers, we ask that they sell them within $3 of our retail price. That $3 wiggle room means that Highland Woodworking can knock $3 off the price and say our books are “on sale.” Lee Valley Tools has some flexibility with the currency transaction to Canadian dollars. And Tools for Working Wood can price our books at $27.68 so it looks like they use a magic pricing formula (maybe they do).
But you cannot sell our books for 50 or 70 percent off. (FYI, if you think this is price fixing, it’s not. It’s called Minimum Advertised Price and was approved by the Supreme Court about 2007.)
But that’s exactly what F&W started to do. They had “blowout” sales where they would knock 50 percent off a book’s price for a week.
We told them to stop. They apologized. Then they did it again.
John at our warehouse in Indianapolis. He is really quite ill in this photo.
I got the news of the sale while I was teaching a class at the Marc Adams School of Woodworking. During lunch, I called F&W from Marc’s gravel parking lot. I told them we were done and to send all our unsold books back to us. We would pay the freight.
When I hung up, I thought: This is the phone call that will put us out of business.
I was wrong. Our other retailers noticed the skirmish with F&W and increased their orders with us. Some ordered more books. Others added titles they hadn’t carried before. By the end of the year, we were back in good shape, and I think I took home $20,000 from Lost Art Press that year.
Two lessons: Big business will try to bully you. They will try to decide when to pay you. They will decide how your pricing should work. They will ask for special treatment compared to your smaller customers.
Don’t give in. Once you start treating your customers differently, you are in for a world of drama and deceit. Whenever we get asked for special treatment, I simply remember what Jennie Alexander always said: “’No’ is a complete sentence.”
The second lesson: Pay your vendors on the day you get their invoice. When someone drops off work they did for us, they leave with a check. When an invoice arrives, John pays it the same day.
Vendors remember this. And if you’ve wondered how we kept so many of our products in stock during the pandemic shortages, you now have your answer.
My friends with MBAs roll their eyes when I talk this way. They argue that LAP should use the 30 days between when we get an invoice and have to pay it to invest our cash and make a little extra.
The facade of the Florida School of Woodwork in Tampa, Florida (not that I’m biased, but I’m teaching there in 2022).
I’ve been getting a lot of requests for gift certificates for our Covington Mechanicals woodworking classes at the storefront. But as I’ve written before, we’re not really a school, and we have so few classes (and so few spaces available) compared to actual woodworking schools that it’s not practicable for us to offer gift certificates for them. (Gift Certificates are available for Lost Art Press/Crucible Tools, but they aren’t usable for classes because those aren’t really associated with LAP. Chris just lets me hold them at the storefront because he’s a prince among men.)
There are surely many more woodworking schools that offer gift certificates; please list them in the comments (ideally with a link to the GC page), so that your fellow woodworkers may get a gift they’ll love: a weekend or week or more of woodworking.
– Fitz
p.s. I’m teaching at The Florida School of Woodwork next October…so that would be my choice 😉
