This week I’m working on the finishing chapters for “The Stick Chair Book” and needed to mix up some new batches of soap finish. As usual, I used soap flakes from the Pure Soap Flake Co.
But not as per usual, I got the recipe wrong.
Instead of combining equal weights of boiling water and soap flakes, my brain told me to measure out the flakes using volume instead of weight. And for some reason I doubled the amount of water.
I knew it was wrong when I started mixing it, but I left it overnight to see what happened.
To my surprise, it made a very nice all-natural liquid soap. So I refilled all the soap dispensers in our house like I meant to do it.
If you would like to repeat my mistake, take 1 cup of soap flakes and combine it with two cups of boiling hot water. Mix it vigorously until all the flakes dissolve. Let it cool, then use it.
We have replenished our stock of “The Woodworker’s Pocket Book” in our online store, and it is available for immediate shipment. The price is $13 plus shipping. This little book is so popular that we sold out of the first press run before it even hit our warehouse.
If you are on the fence about this book, you might want to make your decision before May. We will be raising prices slightly on many of our titles and tools that month.
If you live outside the United States, you can find the book at one of our retailers.
In other “Pocket Book” news, Texas Heritage Woodworks has opened up ordering on a big batch of slipcases. The slipcases are handsome, easy to install and fit the book perfectly.
The proofs for “Make a Chair from a Tree” arrived this morning; it should be in the store and available in about eight weeks.
William Shakespeare is credited with the invention of 1,700 words (or at least his plays are the first known printed use thereof). Jennie Alexander can be credited with just a few less – and we even left some of them in the third edition of “Make a Chair from a Tree” (if their meanings could be easily gleaned from context). Below are just a handful of the interesting neologisms she coined and a few actual (but rarely used) words and phrases she uttered (and wrote) on a regular basis. Who knows? Maybe in 450 years, everyone will be saying “dingus” instead of “fixture.”
Baby Jerome (n.) Someone who crawls under the furniture (to look at joinery).
clacker (n.) A depth stop made from a chopstick that attaches to a drill bit shaft. It clacks when it hits the work.
clean-out chisel (n.) A chisel with a curve or angle at the bottom for cleaning out a mortise (like a gooseneck chisel, but shop-made).
dingus (n.). Any shop-made jig that gets used over and again. For example, the IYFLL (see below) is a dingus.
dotter (n). A thin stick with screws through it, used to simultaneously mark all mortise locations (or mark whatever you’ve laid out with said screws). Conscripted from the turning world.
furshlugginer (adj.) A piece of junk.
GABG (n.) The Glowing Acrylic Bevel Gauge. A dingus made from green acrylic. Used in sighting legs to the proper angle.
gixerdee (adj.) Something that’s out of truth – synonym for cattywampus (which she used interchangeably with gixerdee).
Goldilocksing (adj.), Choosing the best compromise between alternatives, such as the size of a rung mortise.
IYFLL (n). In Your Face Line Level. A dingus that hooks onto a drill-bit extender to help you keep the bit level.
knocker-docker (n.) a wooden mallet.
Miss Moist-Bone Dry (n.) One of many Jennie’s many pseudonyms.
Mouldy figs (n.) People who listen to early Jazz; Jennie (who was a jazz musician) appropriated it as a term for hand-tool purists.
ovality (n.) The quality of being oval.
spruck (n.) The sound a piercer or spoon bit makes while tearing up the wood fibers as it makes its way around a hole.
truncadon (n.) The remainder of a billet after the sapwood and bark has been rived from it – i.e. it has been truncated into its useful wood.
toothy critters (n.) A metal planing stop with sharp teeth.
— Fitz
p.s. Anyone who spent time with Jennie has more to add – above are the just the words/phrases that Larry Barrett, Peter Follansbee, Christopher Schwarz and I could jot down off the top of our heads. So if you have others, please add them in the comments!
A “knocker-docker” in Jennie’s hand. (Photo by Harper Burke)
The chair we built for the step photos in this book, on display at Jennie Alexander’s celebration of life in 2018.
When I drove away from Jennie Alexander’s Baltimore home in 2014, I had her somewhat-reluctant agreement that together we would publish “Make a Chair From a Tree, Third Edition.”
Her reluctance wasn’t due to a lack of passion for the book’s subject – the simple but gorgeous object that we now call a Jennie Chair had been an obsession of hers for decades.
Instead, she didn’t know if she was physically and mentally up to the task. You see, she didn’t want to simply revise the two previous editions of this book. She had learned too much since they were published. She wanted to start from scratch.
So I enlisted Larry Barrett, a chairmaking student of Jennie’s, to help her write and re-write the text. And I can honestly say that if it weren’t for Larry, the book you are holding would never have existed. For four years, he patiently helped Jennie explore her chairmaking process in almost-molecular detail.
When Jennie died in July of 2018, I wondered if the book was going to the grave with her. We didn’t have a finished manuscript. We didn’t have step photos or even a plan for illustrations.
But what we had was a long list of people who had been touched deeply by Jennie and her work and who volunteered to throw themselves at this project.
Larry polished the latest version of the manuscript. One of Jennie’s daughters, Harper Burke, arranged for us to build a Jennie chair and photograph the process in Jennie’s Baltimore workshop. Brendan Gaffney dropped everything to help with photos and illustrations. Nathaniel Krause, one of Jennie’s students, wove the hickory seat for the book.
And Peter Follansbee, one of Jennie’s most devoted students, volunteered to edit the whole thing into this intensely technical (but easy to understand) and personal (but not maudlin) document.
Suddenly, all the barriers to the publication of this book were swept away. Tom McKenna at Taunton Press graciously allowed us to use drawings from the first edition. Anatol Polillo made any copyright problems disappear.
Basically, we got anything we needed to ensure “Make a Chair From a Tree, Third Edition” made it to press. There’s no room to list everyone who helped. You know who you are. Thank you.
I sometimes wonder what Jennie would think of the finished third edition. I know she’d be delighted by the contributions from the people she taught and who, in turn, inspired her.
But I also know that she’d say the book isn’t finished. There are still some loose strings, especially in the section on “bound water.” And perhaps we should just start again at the beginning….
Thank you Jennie, but the burden of refining your gorgeous chair and its elegant construction process is now firmly on our shoulders.
A rough mock-up of the cover and its diestamp.
Off to Press
This week we sent “Make a Chair from a Tree: Third Edition” to press. With any luck, the finished result will be in our hands in late June or July. When it arrives, we will begin selling it immediately. We will sell both a hardbound edition and a pdf version. For the first 30 days, customers who buy the hardback book from us will also receive the pdf for free at checkout (sorry, this offer is not available to people who buy the book from our retailers). The book will be $37 plus domestic shipping.
Like all Lost Art Press books, “Make a Chair from a Tree: Third Edition” is produced and printed in the United States. The book is 184 pages and measures 9″ square – the original trim size of the 1978 edition. Unlike the original edition, our version is in full color and the book is hardback.
Except for a few drawings, the book is completely revised and almost 60 pages longer.
As always, I don’t have any information on which of our retailers will carry the book. We hope that all of them will, but it is entirely their decision. The best way to find out is to ask the retailer directly.
Dressing Tables are nothing else but ordinary Tables [where] the corners are rounded and around the perimeter you add some ledges of about 3 to 4 thumbs in height and you cover it with muslin or lace, according to the wish or the opulence of those using it. We make use of other small Tables that are portable which contain all [things] which serve the grooming of Women, like the mirror, the powder box, pomades, flasks appropriate for applying perfume and other ingredients of this type, which are put on ordinary dressing Tables.
The small dressing Tables represented in Figs. 1 & 2 are composed of a base and a top, which is divided into three parts in width, namely that in the middle, which holds a mirror and opens vertically, and those on the two sides, which cover two boxes, which fall back at both sides of the Table. Beneath the mirror, that is to say, in the middle of the apron rail is placed a little writing Table about a foot wide which slides horizontally. You pull it out when you wish to use it. Below this writing Table and its two side boxes are placed three ordinary drawers of which the depth, added to that of the side boxes, is normally 6 thumbs; [specifically 3 thumbs at least for the side boxes], and the rest for the drawer and the crossbar that holds it. This reduces the depth of the drawers below the side boxes to very little, truthfully. But it is not possible to take advantage of this given that the knees of the person seated before this Table must fit easily beneath the cross-piece [rail] that holds the drawers. See Fig. 3, which represents the side view of this dressing Table taken from the middle of its length, and Fig. 4, which represents another view taken at the location of a side box, which is filled in with a second box fitted with its cover on top. See Fig. 5, which represents the Table viewed from the top and completely closed, and at Fig. 6, which represents this same Table completely uncovered.
The construction of these types of Tables is nothing special [except] the opening on top, the area that holds and supports the mirror, which is done in the following manner:
You make a groove in the two separations of the Table in which you insert a cross-piece AA, Fig. 7, by which you [open and close on a hinge] the part of the Table that holds the mirror and the exterior ridge that is beveled to give the mirror the tilt that is necessary. When you wish to make use of the latter, you pull it from the front to release it from the bottom of part B, which remains in place. You pull it out and you bring it as close to the front of the Table as you judge to be appropriate, making the cross-piece A run inside the grooves of the sides, as you can see in this Figure.
The two other parts of the top are attached on the aprons of the ends of the Table. You should take care to extend over the center or knuckle of the hinges by an equal distance to the projection of the top so that the latter can fully fold over toward the outside. See Fig. 8. The two sides of the top are closed with a lock in the dividers/separations of the Table and they hold the middle part by means of two pins [handles], a, b, Fig. 2, attached below and at the two sides of the latter.
Other dressing Tables are made totally different from those that I just described, either in general form or in the manner of making them open. But these differences are of little consequence. What’s more, those that I just described are the most convenient and are the most used.
I said up above that we make some writing Tables a bit similar to dressing Tables. These Tables do not differ from the latter except by their opening of the middle part, which folds into three parts, namely that of the rear, which remains in place, like those of the dressing Tables; that of the middle a, b, Fig. 9, which you lift in the form of a lectern; and another small part b, c, of about 2 thumbs in width, which is fitted with the middle part, such that when making this latter move around point d, where it is fastened to the Table, part b, c lifts and serves as the ledge of the lectern. You hold it up by means of a little frame support e, f, which you fold beneath the lectern when you do not wish to use it any more.
The night Tables represented in Figs. 10, 11 & 12 are composed of four legs and of two shelves, one of which is placed at about 18 thumbs high and the other at 26 thumbs at least, on top of which you protrude the legs and the three sides to hold whatever you put on these Tables, which you place next to beds and you use only in the night or in the case of sickness. Underneath the first shelf, that is to say, the lowest, you place a drawer of about 2 thumbs deep, which you make open by the right side of the Table with which it is level/flush. The three sides that surround the space contained between the two shelves of the night Table, are normally pierced [ventilated] so that they diminish all the odor that is possible. We sometimes put there some very thin marble shelves, at least on the top one, which is a very good usage given that the marble is not subject, like wood, to warping with the moisture to which these sorts of Tables are exposed, nor to absorbing any bad odor. See Figs. 10 & 11, which represent a night Table viewed from the side and the front. And Fig. 12, which represent this same Table viewed from the top, which is, I believe, sufficient to show all the necessary theory for this sort of work.
In general, these sorts of Tables are not likely to have any type of ornament. It suffices that they be neat and especially lightweight to be easier to transport. That is why a thumb-and-a-half suffices for the size of the legs, where you make the curve/corner contour connecting the side to the back and only chamfer inside, so that the little wood which remains serves to hold [support] the shelf of the top. However, it is good to make this enter by tongue and groove into the sides so as to prevent any warping. You should pay the same attention for the base, which, like that of the top and the sides of the Table, should be only 4 to 5 lines thickness at most. When you make marble shelves for the night Tables, it is good that they be supported underneath by another wooden shelf (although this is not the custom), which prevents their breaking, as often happens.
There is still an infinity of Tables for all spaces, shapes and sizes, the detail of which I will not enter into given that they are often nothing but the whim of the Workers or of those who use them. What’s more, these sorts of Tables differ little from those that I just described, of which the usage is the most generally received, and after which you could design them in whatever form you judge to be appropriate.
Before ending all that concerns Tables and generally furniture with simple frames, and consequently moving to the description of closed pieces [furniture with closing doors], I am going to give in Plate 267 various examples of ornate leg Tables, as I just announced in the article on table legs, page 697. I will end this chapter with a description of screens and folding screens of different types.