Lost Art Press

Making Book Part 5: Cheap Shutterbug

Posted on August 26, 2020September 10, 2020 by Lost Art Press

*Note the backlighting and diagonal elements.*

If you’re really into photography, this might be the last blog entry you ever voluntarily read with my name on it.

I’ve always been into taking pictures. When I was in junior high I took classes at Westark, our local community college, about darkroom processes. I built several pinhole cameras. And I was a lab technician with T.P. Davis Studios. All that happened before I entered high school.

Since the beginning I’ve always eschewed fancy equipment. At first that was because I couldn’t afford anything but basic, used gear. My first camera was my dad’s Vietnam-era Yashika. The first SLR I bought was a Pentax K1000, a completely manual and bulletproof camera.

I haven’t progressed much past that. I still shoot in full manual. I dislike using auto-anything – auto-focus, auto-exposure. Hell, I didn’t even want auto film advance. It’s not because I don’t like technology; this stuff just gets in my way and can break in the field. It’s the same way I feel about dovetail jigs for routers. I have a saw, so I don’t need that headache.

My camera skills have always helped me get jobs as a writer. So I’ve pretty much shot hundreds (sometimes thousands) of frames a month since I was 13. But my photography skills are admittedly down-and-dirty. I’m not trying to make art. I’m trying to convey information as I see it.

With that (lengthy, sorry) preamble, here’s the point: You don’t need fancy equipment, lights or training to make book-quality photos. In fact, the expensive gear will absolutely get in the way of learning to shoot good photos.

*My current setup: A Canon 5D and two ARRI LED lights. I honestly miss my old Canon Rebel and CF light setup. But I loaned them to LAP authors, and they never came back.*

Until recently, I shot every frame with the cheapest Canon Rebel I could get. My lights were a cheap compact fluorescent system (less than $100). When we work with authors, I still recommend a entry-level Canon Rebel and a cheap LED lighting system (still less than $100). Plus a used high-quality tripod. I have a Bogen that I bought used 20 years ago. I don’t know how old it is, but it is rock-solid. Honestly, you can get everything you need to be a book author for less than $700. Less if you buy a used camera.

Once you get the gear, stop reading about gear. Just work with what you have and don’t think about new gear. Don’t listen to podcasts about gear. If you think tool junkies are a problem in woodworking, just spend five minutes in any photography forum.

Guidelines for Good Photos

When I train people to take workshop photos, here are the principles I emphasize.

Lighting. Color temperature is important. Don’t mix a bunch of different lighting sources – lamps, daylight, overhead lights and your shop lights. That will confuse your camera. I recommend two different kinds of lights at most. I use the daylight from the windows and my LED lights. All other lights are turned off.
Lighting, part two. Keep it simple. I use two artificial lighting sources for workshop photos: a keylight and a backlight. Backlighting your subject (even if the subject is an electric drill) improves almost every photo (try it and you can convince yourself). The keylight is used to illuminate and isolate the subject. Move the keylight to produce highlights (like bouncing a billiard ball from the light, to the subject and into the lens). The above paragraph could be expanded to be a book. Move your lights and observe the results.
Lighting, part three. Sometimes removing a light from the setup is the answer. The more light sources you are juggling, the more difficult it is to control the result.
Shutter speed and f-stop. Learn the relationship between shutter speed and your aperture (the f-stop). The aperture controls how much of the frame is in focus (called the “depth of field”). Because you are shooting with a tripod, choose an aperture that shows exactly what you want with the background blurry. You can use any shutter speed – even slow ones – because the tripod holds the camera steady. I regularly use shutter speeds that are 1/2 second and slower. You just have to hold still. Use the timer on the camera (or a remote shutter release) to prevent camera shake.
Set your camera to shoot RAW files. These are easier to manipulate in Photoshop and don’t degrade like jpegs do.
Composition. Avoid taking photos that are like construction drawings: straight-on elevation views, for example. The eye likes diagonal lines. If you can compose objects in the frame, you can use them to guide the viewer to what is important. A chisel can guide the eye to a joint, for example. This takes some patience and relates to the next principle.
Composition, part two. Do your cropping in the frame. Don’t assume you can “zoom in” on an image in Photoshop and get good results. That said, I crop tight and then back up just a little to give myself a little background to play with.
Never stop with one image. After you take a photo, force yourself to move the camera, move the objects in the frame (or both) and try another setup. I almost never use my first frame. It’s usually my second or third (at least). When shooting a finished piece, I might do 10 setups.

*Note the shallow depth of field and the diagonal lines of the legs of the divider that take you to the armbow.*

When I shoot photos for a book, I record every process at the bench, even if I don’t think it will make it in the book. When I move images from my camera to my computer, I also delete anything that is unpublishable (to save disk space) and give my photos meaningful file names that reflect what is going on in the image.

These actions have saved my butter many times in the last 24 years. Recording all the woodworking processes helps me remember construction details while I’m writing the text for an article or book. And having meaningful file names makes it easy to find the photos years later when I might need them for another book, magazine article or blog entry.

— Christopher Schwarz

Note: This is the first of several posts on photography, though they aren’t all going to run one after the other. The next post on photography (in September) will show some lighting setups and what happens in the frame.

Read other posts from the “Making Book” series here.

Two Planing Exercises

Posted on August 25, 2020August 25, 2020 by fitz

The following is excerpted from Robert Wearing’s “The Essential Woodworker.”

The aim of the following exercises is to produce full-length, full-width shavings. The first exercise will show whether the reader is achieving this aim.

29and30

Grip in the vice, edge upwards, a piece of clear softwood about 300 x 75 x 25mm (12 x 3 x 1in.). With a woodworker’s soft pencil draw a line down the middle (Fig 29). Using a sharp, well-adjusted plane, plane a full-length, full-width shaving. The pencil mark should be completely removed. Mark the wood with the pencil and plane again, repeat this for ten shavings. If a trace of the pencil mark remains, begin the count again. After ten successful attempts have a brief rest then cut a further ten. This is the technique of planing when the wood is narrower than the plane.

When the wood is wider than the plane, the technique is modified as follows. Grip in the vice a similar piece of wood about 75mm (3in.) wide. Clean the dirt and roughness from one of the wide surfaces and draw on it three pencil lines (Fig 30). Proceed to plane as before, in groups of three shavings, either left side, right side and centre or left, centre, right. After three cuts, if all trace of the pencil mark is gone, the score is one. Continue in groups of three as before up to ten. Start again if a trace of pencil remains. It is not necessary to take off a line with each cut, but after three cuts all the lines must be gone. Repeat as before for a second group of ten.

If the wood is wider still a group of four, five or more cuts will be necessary. The important thing is that the planing must be regular and consistent. Planing haphazardly all over the board will never produce a flat surface.

Facing
Just as a building requires a true and accurate foundation from which all the subsequent measurements can be taken, so every piece of wood requires one accurate surface from which sizes and angles can be taken later on. This is known as the true face (often confusingly called the ‘face side’). There is a straightforward method of obtaining the true face, which can be tried out on a softwood piece of about 300 x 75 x 25mm (12 x 3 x 1in.).

Grip the wood in the vice and plane off the dirt and roughness from one large side (Fig 31). Resist the temptation to clean up all sides – it may look nice but there is a good chance of ending up under the required size. Now make a thick, soft pencil mark at each end (Fig 32). With a fine set plane try to plane the piece hollow. That is, start the cut just inside the first pencil mark and lift off just before the second. Continue this process with a fine set until the plane no longer cuts. Failure will be shown by the removal of a pencil mark. If this happens replace the mark and continue.

When the plane will cut no more, plane the wood from end to end. The first cut will remove a small shaving from each end, and subsequent shavings will get bigger. When a full-length shaving has been produced, stop, and test for accuracy (Fig 33). Naturally, if the workpiece is wider than the plane, groups of cuts will be taken in this way.

Tests for a true face
There are three tests for a true face:
1. Is the work flat in length? Test with a steel or wooden straightedge which must be longer than the work (Fig 34).
2. Is the work flat in width? Test in several places with a rule (Fig 35).
3. Is the work ‘in wind’ (i.e. twisted)? ‘Wind’ is pronounced as in ‘winding a clock’ or ‘on a winding road.’ Test with a pair of winding strips. Place a winding strip on at each end, step back a couple of paces then sight across the top of the winding strips. These magnify twist and quite a small error will be revealed (Fig 36).
Correct where necessary, then test again. Take care that in correcting for one of these tests, one or both of the others is not disturbed. When all the tests have been satisfactorily passed, put on a pencil face mark (Fig 37).
For some constructions the true face is inwards, others require it on the outside. It is important to bear this in mind when examining the timber before facing. In other words, does the best-looking surface have the true face or not?

Edging
The true edge (sometimes called the ‘face edge’) is the next important stage in producing material to size. The work already faced is held in the vice edge upwards and preferably with the true face outwards (Fig 38). This latter will of course depend on how the grain runs. The process is similar to that of facing. Clean the dirt and roughness from the edge on which the face mark stands. Make a strong pencil mark at each end (Fig 39). Plane as previously to hollow the workpiece between the marks, continuing until the plane no longer cuts. Now plane right through, stopping when the first full-length, full-width shaving results (Fig 40).

Tests for a true edge
1. Is the work flat in length? Test with a straightedge longer than the work (Fig 41).
2. Is the work flat in width? Test with a rule; if the last shaving was full width the work will be flat in width automatically (Fig 42).
3. Is the edge square (i.e. at 90°) to the true face? Test with a try-square in several places (Fig 43).

Correct where necessary and mark with a ‘vee’ pointing to the true face (Fig 44). Often a cross is used which is not so useful. If the face mark is lost the ‘vee’ indicates which side it was. If the edge mark is lost the face mark does the same.

Edge planing
When the test for squareness has been made (Fig 45), it is more than likely that one side of the wood will be higher than the other. The obvious remedy appears to be to tilt the plane. However, this will merely produce a second surface (Fig 46), making it even more difficult to settle the plane. It was stated earlier that the jack plane blade is sharpened to a curve and advantage will now be taken of this. With the plane correctly adjusted (Fig 47), a shaving cut in the centre of the plane will be of an equal thickness across its width. A shaving cut near the edge of the plane will have a thick side and a thin side, the latter thinning down to virtually nothing. Settle the plane on the workpiece (Fig 48). Successive shavings cut in this manner will gradually reduce the high side to squareness. The last shaving should be cut using the centre of the blade.
In order that the plane does not wander sideways during the stroke the normal grip is replaced by the edge grip. The left hand no longer holds the front knob but instead grips the sole just behind it with the thumb and first finger. The finger acts as a fence preventing sideways movement (see photographs 8 and 9). This is the standard method for planing all edges accurately.

Photo 8 Planing – the edge grip. This is a way of avoiding the plane moving sideways.

Photo 9 Planing – the edge grip. Here the fingers make a fence.

Production Delay for ‘The Anarchist’s Workbench’

Posted on August 24, 2020August 24, 2020 by Lost Art Press

Printed copies of “The Anarchist’s Workbench” were scheduled to leave the press’ dock last Wednesday, but our quality control people (who don’t work for the printing plant) spotted a manufacturing defect on some copies.

If you look at the photo, you’ll see the problem. We aren’t exactly sure how it happened, but it occurred on only one signature of the book, and it didn’t happen to all of the copies of the press run.

That means every copy of the entire run has to be inspected. Good copies will get repacked and sent to our warehouse. Bad copies will be fully recycled.

So shipping this book has been delayed a bit. As soon as we know anything, we will let you know.

We hate it when these things happen, but we’re grateful our quality control people caught it. Having to process 1,000 returned, defective books from customers (and paying for it) is the stuff of my nightmares. I’d much rather have the nightmare where I’m in college, naked and riding a goat into my Law & Ethics class.

— Christopher Schwarz

The Volcano & the Workbench

Posted on August 24, 2020August 24, 2020 by Lost Art Press

*The beginning. In the House of the Vetti, this dining room fresco is perhaps the earliest depiction of a workbench in the West. Photo by Narayan Nayar*

Editor’s note: On this day (Aug. 24) in 79 C.E., Mount Vesuvius erupted, killing thousands and forever changing the course of archaeology. The ash that covered the nearby towns was devastating, but it also created a detailed snapshot of everyday life. It also gave us the two earliest images of workbenches in the West. To remember this day, here is the first chapter of “Ingenious Mechanicks,” which is about my visit to the volcano.

The journey to the summit of Mount Vesuvius has all the romance of visiting an unlicensed reptile farm. It begins in Ercolano, Italy, a touristy village in the shadow of the volcano and home to Herculaneum, one of the towns buried by Vesuvius’s eruption in 79 C.E.

As Narayan Nayar (the photographer for the journey) and I stepped off the train from Naples we were assaulted by young, attractive Italians. Their job: Bait tourists to nearby restaurants. We glanced around and saw only one escape route from the train station’s cul-de sac. So, we plowed through the crowd of eager human fishing lures.

We emerged from the other side a bit relieved. Then we realized we’d scurried past the bus company that was supposed to drive us up the volcano. We turned around and dove back into the swarm of too-perky people in order to catch our bus.

*Where are the virgins? The cone of Vesuvius is not a fiery hole leading into the bowels of the earth. It looks like a gravel quarry where you might buy stone for your garden. Photo by Narayan Nayar*

The twisty-turny bus ride ended 660 feet below the volcano’s summit, and we then climbed a steep trail to the volcano’s rim. The top resembles a gravel pit where one of Frank Herbert’s worms might emerge. There’s no deep hole for tossing human sacrifices – throw a virgin into Vesuvius and she’s only going to get skinned knees and a sunburn. I looked around the volcano and promptly excused the early settlers of the area for building their homes at the base of Vesuvius. The only evidence you’re on a volcano (besides the little gift shops) is the occasional tiny plume of gas and the odd rocks below your feet.

I picked up a few rocks. For rocks, they were young – likely the result of the 1944 eruption, which destroyed several villages. I looked out from our 4,200-foot perch at the buildings in every direction below, which are built on top of villages that were covered in ash from earlier eruptions. It’s a grim scene if you think about it too much – 600,000 people now live in the so-called “red zone” for a future eruption.

*Ruined. Even with thousands of tourists around you, Pompeii is so sprawling that it seems deserted. Photo by Narayan Nayar*

And yet, as I fondled the rocks in my hand I felt only gratitude for this deadly, fire-breathing mountain.

The Earliest Workbenches
The recorded history of woodworking begins with the Egyptians. But the recorded history of workbenches begins (for now) with Vesuvius. Its massive eruption in 79 C.E. buried Pompeii, Herculaneum and other sites, preserving frescoes, buildings, pottery, human remains and even wooden furniture.

At Pompeii, the ash blanketed a fresco showing a low, four-legged workbench being used for mortising by a man in Greek attire. At nearby Herculaneum, the eruption preserved a fresco showing “erotes” – what we might call “buck nekkid cupids” – sawing a board at an eight-legged low workbench. It features a holdfast and other holdfast holes. This fresco has since been destroyed, but we have engravings that were made soon after its discovery (more on both the frescoes’ stories is ahead).

*Graven image. This copperplate engraving was made by Italian artists shortly after the Herculaneum fresco was discovered. Sadly, the original has deteriorated.*

These two images are the earliest representations of workbenches of which I’m aware. And they launched my interest in exploring knee-high workbenches and how to use them to build furniture, boats, storage containers and wagon wheels.

The conventional wisdom is that these low benches were used in former times for simple work and were replaced by superior modern benches, which are thigh-high or taller. But the more I studied low benches, the more I found that they never disappeared. They are still in use. Additionally, these low benches can be used for complex work, including steam bending compound shapes and lutherie.

The low bench is more than a thick plank of wood with legs. It’s also a collection of simple jigs and appliances that allow you to do remarkable work while sitting comfortably on an easy-to-build platform. For centuries, these simple jigs remained hidden in plain sight in paintings and drawings in museums. And their appliances have been proven to work, both at my low benches and by the modern craftsmen who still use them.

But why bother with this musty old crap? Modern woodworkers are blessed with a wide array of vises, dogs, clamps and other devices that can immobilize a piece of wood so you can work on its faces, edges and ends.
Well, at times I think we tend to make our workholding far more complex than it has to be. And that can affect your approach to the things you build. While your brain might see the logic of a screw-driven tail vise with a series of movable metal dogs, the ingenious early craftsman might find this same vise slow, fragile, fussy to maintain and cumbersome in use.

*Teach a Roman to shave. It is a short intellectual leap from the low workbench to other “sit and work” appliances, such as the shavehorse.*

I empathize with the early woodworker. My brain is wired to look for a simpler solution to a problem instead of creating complexity.

Example: Earlier this year, I spent a couple hours in the dentist’s chair and was force-fed several episodes of a home-improvement show focused on carving out storage from oddball places in a home. Some of the examples I remember over the whirring of the dental Dremel include:

• Hinge your steps to create trap doors on the landings of your stairs to make small bins in the wasted space between your stringers.
• Find stud walls that are chases for utilities and turn them into built-in chests of drawers.
• In attic spaces, create sliding racks on the interior of a high-pitched roof. You slide giant plastic bins into the racks – it’s a bit like a top-hanging drawer.

Through the entire program I wanted to puke (that was mostly because I have a sensitive gag reflex). But it was also because these “storage solution” programs neglect to mention the easiest way to control clutter:
Get rid of your excess crap.

No one should have so much stuff that they have to slave excessively to make a place to stow it. In the same way, no workbench needs vises on all four corners (I’ve built these for students and customers) to build fine furniture. You just don’t.

With this book, I hope to expose you to early and simple ways of holding your work. While many of these devices were used on low workbenches, most of them work on high workbenches as well. I use both sorts of benches – high and low – in my work for building all manner of things, from stud walls to Welsh stick chairs, dovetailed chests to nailed-together coffins.

The workholding on these benches is truly ingenious and effective. Things change when you sit down to work. And I think you’ll be surprised what you can do on your bum: planing, chiseling, shaving and even dovetailing.

The low bench form might not be for everyone. But it might be right for you and you might not know it. Woodworkers with limited mobility use low benches because they can sit and work. Apartment woodworkers use low benches because they take up little space and do double-duty as seating or a coffee table. Curious woodworkers use them because – dammit – they are an interesting form to build and use. Many chairmakers already use a low bench (but they call it a shavehorse), as do many other specialty trades, including coopers and basketmakers. Oh, and a low bench is the best sawbench ever made – promise.

One more plug for these early benches: Using their lessons, you can make almost any surface into a worksurface. A couple drywall screws can turn a picnic table into an English-style workbench. A missing brick in a wall (and a pine wedge) can become a face vise. A shavehorse can be cobbled together with a rock and a scrap of wood strapped to your gut.

Even if you never build a low workbench and reject its appliances as “not whiz-bang-y” enough for your engineering mindset, you might enjoy the journey of discovery required to write this book. It involved trips to exotic Italy, Germany and Indianapolis. (And understanding the low bench might connect your work to Chinese benches.) In the process, we rescued oak slabs from a pallet factory. We flushed $1,000 down a metaphorical toilet to learn about the construction of the first modern workbench in 1505. We ate a ton of Neapolitan pizza.

Workbenches are at the heart of everything we do. So, let’s take a brief look at the history of Western workbenches and consider why it’s even worth looking at ancient benches.

Where Are They Today? A Profile of Aime Ontario Fraser

Posted on August 23, 2020March 20, 2024 by fitz

The first woman I was ever aware of in the realm of woodworking publications is Aimé Ontario Fraser. It was the early 1990s when I began to notice her name, and occasionally her picture, in the pages of Fine Woodworking. By then, I had spent a decade in custom furniture and cabinet shops in England and the States. One of the shops where I’d worked had three women, along with about ten men. But in the pages of the woodworking magazines I read, women rarely made an appearance.

The last article I remember seeing with Fraser’s byline was in 2005. After that, she slipped from my notice. Every so often I wondered what had become of this woman who was among the first to normalize images of women in woodworking – to get our eyeballs so used to seeing women (of all ages, sizes, etc., just as we do with men) fitting butt hinges, planing boards, ripping panels on table saws, carving mantels, and so on, that we may someday no longer say “wow, a woman woodworker” and simply see someone building a cabinet or applying her skill in the furnishing of an interior. So I contacted Fine Woodworking’s unfailingly helpful Betsy Engel, who forwarded my inquiry to Fraser. To my delight, she agreed to speak with me.

***

328846353_c88c2b4fae_m — *The Sono 15, a boat Fraser designed for teaching. “It’s a great little boat, and there are 27 of them around New England, all built by students of mine.”*

Fraser got her start in woodworking as a high school exchange student in New Zealand. It was 1976 and New Zealand was the center of modern wood composite boatbuilding technology – we’re talking 1/8” or thinner layers of wood laminated with epoxy and fiberglass cloth to produce hulls that are very light and strong. Even though she hadn’t been allowed to take woodworking classes in high school back home (she had to take home economics instead), she got a job working for a boat builder. She loved the work.

Back in the States, she wanted to keep building. She became romantically involved with a sailing buddy in Connecticut whom she would later marry. “He built stuff, so we started doing boat stuff,” she says. Building boats and finishing hulls became her work for the next decade-plus. This is how she learned woodworking.

Aime Ontario Fraser — *Fraser earlier in her career*

Fifteen years later, she worked her way into running the boat shop at The Maritime Center (now the Maritime Aquarium), where she focused on traditional local boats and boatbuilding techniques. She led a group of serious volunteer builders, and the job also allowed her to work with schoolchildren; at one point she and a group of seventh graders built four boats in two weeks and then raced them on the river behind the Center.

On the Topic of Gender

At this point it’s worth noting that the trajectory of Fraser’s woodworking career has had a lot to do with being a woman in a field long dominated by men. “I’m pretty skilled as a woodworker,” she says. “I know how to make odd shapes and how to fit things together so well that the water doesn’t come in.” If you know anything about boatbuilding, you’ll appreciate she’s being modest. Such meticulous work is no mean feat. “But I never worked in a boatyard or on a building site. I honestly didn’t want to put up with that s**t.”

Take mansplaining, for instance. (Please, do take it, and never bring it back.) “I remember when I was in charge of the boat shop at the Maritime Center,” Fraser recounts, “and one of my jobs was to build boats so that people could watch me. I was a display! I had a team of volunteers including a V.P. from GE, a retired general, some heavy-duty people I had to manage. They would come into the shop and work, and we worked together to build boats in a traditional manner. But then men would wander by to watch the display. Some high level work was going on, and random men would tell me I was doing it wrong and start lecturing me on how to use a chisel or plane. Anyone who knew anything about building could see what I was really doing, yet so many clueless men felt compelled to tell me I was wrong. This phenomenon has always been hard for me to fathom.”

It’s fair to say that neither Fraser nor I would claim that such advice is only given to women. What’s irksome – well, aside from the “correction” being based on a widely held belief that fails to take all relevant factors into account – is the experience of people assuming you know less than you do because you’re a woman. Which is pretty ironic in Fraser’s case, considering she’s something of an expert on this subject. In 2002 she wrote an article on sharpening handplanes for Fine Woodworking (#157, July/August 2002) that involved electron micrographing plane irons and sharpening stones.

Shortly after, she put together a team for the New England Handplaning Contest (organized by The Woodworkers Store in Norwalk Connecticut); her team included the then-president of DMT, students, and friends, and relied heavily on Harrelson Stanley of HMS Enterprises, importer of Japanese tools and sharpening equipment. They trained by sharpening planes every day for weeks prior and discussed technique. The president of DMT made them a diamond flattening device so they could flatten the soles of their planes. Fraser was named the New England Handplane Champion for producing a 9-foot long lace-thin shaving of Alaskan cedar. “After I won it, I had to go to the grocery store on my way home. I remember walking down the frozen food aisle and thinking, ‘I’m the New England Hand Plane Champion!’” she recalls, chuckling at the geekiness of it all.

Nevertheless, corrections from men on the proper way to put down a plane continued to dog her. She did a TV commercial for Woodcraft in which she was planing a wide panel while talking about the company’s products. She put the plane down upright on the bench. Alarm bells went off around the country. “People throughout my career who were not professional woodworkers, people who did not win the New England Handplane Championship, would tell me I was doing it wrong!” she laughs. “I would have to say, ‘no if you put it on its side you risk nicking the blade [or] cutting yourself. Put it down gently, but not on its side, [or] somebody’s gonna get hurt.”

And then there’s just plain old-fashioned sexism. “I always faced a lot of crap for being a woman,” she continues. “‘Oh, you do that and you’re a woman?!’ I didn’t let it bother me. Writing helped a lot because it gave me many more opportunities than if I’d been a tradesperson alone. But I always felt, ‘This is what I am, this is what I do.’ I think like a woodworker. I never wanted to get too bothered about gender, though it’s always been there. At this one boatyard, one guy called me the Varnish Muffin. I said, ‘Look, I’m a professional; I have a staff of four and thousands of dollars’ worth of equipment. If you want me to come and varnish your boats, I will, but I am not a ‘Varnish Muffin.’ I don’t varnish just because I’m the captain’s girlfriend and girls varnish. I varnish because it’s my part of my profession.”

The Taunton Connection

Throughout the early years of her career she wrote for WoodenBoat and other boat-related magazines, in addition to running her own business on the side. One winter’s day, as she headed out to work on a 60-foot yacht in the water, she realized, “if I fall off this dock I will die, and no one will know, because I’m the only one out here and it’s too cold, and the current is too swift [to survive].” She started looking for another way to stay in woodworking and was hired by the Taunton Press.

After leaving Taunton around 1998, she had a job as the director of education, planning classes and teaching at The Woodworkers Store in Norwalk, CT that had a woodworkers’ club. People paid for shop time by the hour and there was someone on hand to help with projects. “I tended not to do ‘woodworking for women’ because I felt that was talking down to people,” she says. “I recognize that women at that time needed extra encouragement. But I didn’t like the idea of putting the women off in another room. I [did teach] boatbuilding classes. It was Taunton’s 25th anniversary; the owner of the franchise teamed up with Taunton and we had a bunch of authors come in and demonstrate while working.”

After that, she was the Principle Instructor at the Wooden Boat Workshop, also in Norwalk. It operated on a similar concept, focused on building small boats.

Fraser has written two books: Getting Started in Woodworking and Your First Workshop. She did technical editing for Taunton Books, working on the Mark Duginske’s Band Saw Handbook and the second edition of Bruce Hoadley’s classic, Understanding Wood. After that, she hooked up with John Kelsey and Ian Kirby; together they had a small company called Cambium Press, which published Kirby’s books on sharpening and dovetails, along with other books. She also ghost-wrote James Krenov’s book With Wakened Hands. “I was given a box of photographs and several hours of recordings, and we made that book.” She spent a week with Krenov to finish it up – a special experience, given that he was one of her heroes from the 1970s. “I had the good fortune to hang out with people who were my heroes,” she reflects. “Krenov, Mark Duginske, Ian Kirby, and others. We became good friends and had a lot of fun together.”

By 2008 Fraser had gone out on her own, with a 1500-square-foot woodworking shop in an old warehouse in Connecticut. Along with other types of cabinets, she did specialized work for equestrians, designing and building travel cases for all manner of dressage equipment.

boot rack with jacket and hat — *Boot rack with jacket and hat, one of the specializes pieces of equestrian equipment Fraser made in her business*

10.21.taezologo — *Fraser’s business logo*

Then the economy shifted, culminating in the housing crisis and the Great Recession. As a one-person business without the capitalization necessary to survive the drying up of high-end spending, she was devastated. She worked all day in her shop, then went to an evening job at a grocery store in an effort to keep the bills paid. “When they taught me how to run the fryer, I cried just a little,” she says. Eventually she realized she could not keep her business going. She sold all of her machinery, though she kept the hand tools and clamps.

*Saddle stand with shop-made brass hardware*

Just last year, Fraser was hired as New England Training Coordinator for Mueller Reports, a company that specializes in insurance inspections for homeowners and small business. She trains people to inspect buildings. Not surprisingly, her knowledge of building and woodworking is invaluable. “It’s a wonderful challenge, and the steadiest paycheck I’ve had in my life,” aside from when she was at Taunton Press.

Fraser November 2017 — *Fraser in November 2017*

For the present, Fraser thinks of woodworking as a fallow field she’s letting rest. She lives in a community that regulates how she uses her garage. “But I do have a basement and tons of clamps and tons of tools,” she adds, thinking about how she’ll get back into it.

Finally, what about the name Ontario? I’ve always been curious, so I asked. Fraser’s family is from Upstate New York near the Canadian border. Her grandmother was from Ontario, and her parents had a summer cottage on Lake Ontario, so that became her middle name.

Thank you, Aimé, for allowing me to interview you, for digging up all these old photographs, and for being one of the early public faces of women in our field.

— Nancy Hiller, author of “Making Things Work“