Editor’s note: Due to extensive work on “The Stick Chair Book,” it’s been a little while since we published a chair chat, today we are back with a Swedish chair assembled with Fish Glue and primitive IKEA joints. Salty language about pizza, electrocuted meatballs and potatoes will follow so be warned. For those who are easily offended, here is a video with a dog on a plane instead.
(more…)Undesirable Conditions: A ‘Shop Tails’ Excerpt
A lot of what Nancy writes about in her forthcoming “Shop Tails” centers on conditions. The myriad conditions she lived in as a child and teen, from a traditional suburban two-parent home that went through some of the same cultural shifts as the world at large in the 1960s to an English boarding school to a small London flat. She writes about the conditions of her varied work environments, and the conditions agreed upon and sometimes imposed on by employers, employees and clients. She explores the conditions in which she found her human and non-human partners, and the way their actions and interactions helped and hindered, informing who she is today.
Film director Werner Herzog said, “I think it is a quest of literature throughout the ages to describe the human condition.” It’s perhaps the not-so-hidden quest of “Shop Tails,” too, even if that wasn’t Nancy’s initial intention. Her essays within will make you laugh. They will make you angry. They will inspire you to create something beautiful (a piece of furniture, a garden, a better relationship, a home). They will break your heart. And they will stay with you.
On the lighter side of the human condition here’s an excerpt from Chapter 14, “Alfie and the Cat Whisperer (2012).” It begins with working conditions that are utterly undesirable all thanks to a sweet and small pale-grey tabby with an oddly pinched face. Enjoy!
— Kara Gebhart Uhl
Not long after I adopted Tom, the gray tabby kitten I brought home with Lizzie in 2004, he developed a terrible case of diarrhea that sent us to the vet. It turned out to be feline infectious peritonitis. I did my best to keep him hydrated and comfortable, hoping he’d recover, but his condition just got worse. I had him euthanized when we were finally past the point of hope, then buried him among the daffodils behind the shop. Fortunately, Lizzie had escaped contagion.
I wanted to adopt another male tabby. I returned to the shelter, where the cat room was again beyond capacity. To accommodate the overflow, the staff had put a couple of crates in the lobby at the front of the building, across from some monstrous rabbits, evidently bred to exceed the size of the largest Maine coon cat. Perhaps the idea behind this exercise in genetic engineering was to improve a rabbit’s self-defense options by making a single bunny capable of smothering a cat to death simply by jumping on top of it.
In one of the crates nearby I spotted a small pale-gray tabby. “Alfie” was printed on the label. He was a skinny guy, his face oddly pinched. His eyes had a far-off look that struck me as wistful, as though he was begging Take me – though in retrospect I realize the look was a sign of ill health. I filled out the paperwork, and the next night I brought him home to be my shop cat.
When Daniel and I arrived at work the following morning we realized Alfie was suffering from some sort of digestive problem. Small brown puddles of diarrhea were scattered across the floor; the smell was so acrid it burned our eyes. “I’m not going in there,” choked Daniel, reversing back out through the door. After filling my lungs with fresh air, I dashed in and started the cleanup. I opened the windows and turned on a fan, but even an hour later the stench was enough to turn our stomachs.
I took Alfie to the vet, who prescribed a course of antibiotics – sadly, all for naught. The poor cat slept, ate and shat. This was no ordinary defecation. We’re talking epic shitting. One of us would turn off the sander, only to hear a sickening sound like that of a sex worker at an all-night pancake place attempting to squeeze the last dregs of ketchup from a plastic bottle at 5 in the morning. Twenty years before, a customer had told me to burn a candle as an antidote to nauseating smells. I took to burning crumpled sheets of newspaper, setting up miniature pyres around the shop and lighting them as necessary, hoping my insurance agent wouldn’t show up for a surprise inspection.
“You know, this is really not OK,” said Daniel after a couple of weeks. “You can’t expect people to work in these conditions.”
— Nancy Hiller, author of “Kitchen Think” and “Making Things Work.” Read more of Nancy Hiller’s profiles, which we call “Little Acorns,” via this link.
Know Your Enemy
Years ago I was in England with Roy Underhill (no, this is not a Penthouse letter), and we had to walk from our hotel to a restaurant to meet Peter Follansbee (I know this sounds like a woodworker’s wet dream, but, well… OK it was).
Anyway….
It was a long walk, and we had to pass through some woods and walk by a canal. And during the entire walk, Roy is pointing out all the names of the trees and plant life. “That’s a Grimblethorne – punicus polifficus! And look at the size of that Shandyback Fufflenewt tree – you never see them in a stand of three like that. Did you know the Fufflenewt tree was an important player in the Battle of Hastings? And that its bark was ground down in former times to use as a poultice for people suffering from dingleworm?”
And then I realized: I know almost nothing about living trees, except for the obvious species – oak, maple, walnut, locust, cherry. When my kids ask me: “What kind of tree is that?” My standard answer is: “Let’s kill it, and I can tell you.”
If you are like me, there is help for this problem. I recently found an app called Picture This that identifies plant life, and it really, really works. I’ve toyed around with a lot of other apps that identify trees, and none has made me happy.
Picture This is expensive for an app – $30 a year. But during the past week it has brought me more joy than even the weather radar app on my phone (ask Megan about how much I love my radar). I have spent many mornings identifying all the trees and bushes in our Covington neighborhood. And then reading more about them through the app.
Picture This also does a lot of other things that don’t interest me, such as diagnosing plant diseases and suggesting how to care for them. Sorry people, I still just want to kill trees.
The interface is pretty easy to use. While inside the app you point the phone’s camera at the tree and press a button. In a couple seconds it identifies the plant and spits out a bunch of information about it, including how to care for it, where the species grows, poems about it, symbolism it is associated with, etc. etc.
If you think I’m full of it, you can try the app free for seven days.
— Christopher Schwarz
Disclaimer: Nobody paid me for this blog entry. I bought the app with my own damn money. Blah, blah, blah.
Now Shipping: Crucible Dividers, Type 2
The first batch of our new dividers are in the store and ready to ship. They are $110 plus domestic shipping.
These dividers are a top-to-bottom redesign of the tool. Lots has changed. They still work great, but they are built with a different aesthetic. Instead of being polished a near-perfect finish, these dividers are finished minimally off the mill. They are matte gray and there are small tool marks in evidence of how they were made. Our goal was to have the tool resemble what you would get from Stanley (or other top-line makers) in the early 20th century – not a custom tool.
But boy do they work well.
A special thanks here to mechanical designer Josh Cook and machinist/mad scientist Craig Jackson for figuring out how to make these just like we intended, and at an affordable price (for a small-batch U.S. manufacturer).
If we sell out, don’t despair, we’re making a lot more.
— Christopher Schwarz
‘Making & Using Punches’
The following is excerpted from “Joiner’s Work,” by Peter Follansbee – in effect a doctoral thesis on processing furniture-shaped chunks of lumber from the tree using and axe, froe, hatchet and brake. Follansbee dives into deep detail on how he festoons his pieces with carvings that appear complex but are remarkably straightforward – plus lessons in 17th-century casework. His approach to the work, which is based on examining original pieces and endless shop experimentation, is a liberating and honest foil to the world of micrometers and precision routing.
The book features six projects, starting with a simple box with a hinged lid. Follansbee then shows how to add a drawer to the box, then a slanted lid for writing. He then plunges into the world of joined chests and their many variations, including those with a paneled lid and those with drawers below. And he finishes up with a fantastic little bookstand.
Punched accents often enhance carved decoration throughout the design. These punches are sometimes just a textured effect, often called “stippling,” in the background, or extended to include stars, crosses, floral patterns and other designs stamped onto the solid foreground of the carvings.
Here’s my main set of punches (Fig. 3.41). From right to left, a 5/32″ nail set, a Maltese cross filed from a large cut nail, a background punch, and a small flower design. All but the nail set are shop-made.
Working metal is one of my least-favorite shop tasks, but I can usually worry my way through making some punches. It only takes a few minutes. The stock is usually pretty soft; the hardest stuff I file is when I use an old cut nail. I have no hack saw, but one would be handy if you’re going to do much of this work. One place it would help would be trimming the length of something like the cut nails if their point is too small a cross-section for the intended design. Otherwise, a grinder of some sort, or some coarse filing brings the end down to a clean and finished blank.
I start the background punch with a piece of stock about 1/4″ x 1/2″ x 3″ long. Make friends with a blacksmith; they have this stuff around. I file a row of lines dividing the punch across the wide dimension (Fig. 3.42). First in half, then half again etc. I use a feather-edge file to start these lines; you could use the hacksaw first.
I angle the feather-edge file by tilting the handle down to start this line. Then I gradually bring the handle up, lowering the file into the cut. I think of this as scoring the lines. I’ll finish them with a triangular file.
Then flip the piece in the vise, and file a couple of lines to define the other rows (Fig. 3.43). In this example, I filed two lines one way, and four the other, creating a punch with three rows of five teeth.
Don’t worry if your lines aren’t perfectly parallel. Get them close and then you’ll work on making things even out with the next filing.
Once I’ve defined the layout with the feather-edge file, I switch to a triangular file to bring the teeth of the punch down to size (Fig. 3.44). Drop the triangular file into one of your slots you just made, and start to work it along. Check your progress frequently – things can change shape quickly. I find I have to tilt my point of view this way and that to catch the teeth in the right light. Aim for small “heads” to the punch’s teeth, evenly sized. Evenly spaced is good, but not as big a deal as size. If some teeth are too big, they won’t make as deep an impression.
The triangular file is easy to guide. Keep the top surface of the file level and the other two sides will be symmetrically aligned as they work mating sides of the row.
Variation in tooth size is expected, but teeth that are too big keep the punch from working well. The outer rows on this punch are both too big, especially the one on the right (Fig. 3.45). This is easy to fix. There wasn’t enough room to file another row, so I beveled off the outer corner of the punch, until I brought those teeth down to size.
Periodically take the punch from the vise and strike it in a piece of scrap wood. It’s good to be organized so you can keep track of your progress. I wish I were.
Make the accent punches in a similar manner. For the round flower punch I angle the feather-edge file so it’s just hitting at the corner of the punch’s end (Fig. 3.46). I file a notch from the outer edge to the middle, then turn the punch in the vise and file another notch across from the first.
Tilt the file to come across the end of the punch. Sometimes you have to then tilt your head so you can see where you’re going. File a little, look a lot.
Keep splitting the spaces in half as best you can. If it gets off-kilter, split any thicker spaces in half again.
At this point, my pattern is out of whack (Fig. 3.47). What’s more important than symmetry is that the remaining “petals” are narrow. The wide parts in this view got filed to split them into smaller bits.
It’s surprising how small the remaining parts are to make the pattern work. It’s mostly negative spaces in the metal to create the impression in the wood.
Some find and use leather punches; I have no experience with them. If they are large enough they should work fine. If the business end of them is too fine, they might not make an actual impression in the wood. An easy way to see if a punch will work is to smack it on various pieces of scrap wood. Lightly on softer woods, harder on hard woods.
