One of the many pleasing transformations described in “Kitchen Think” involves this kitchen in the home of Kathleen Funkey. Located in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, it’s one of just a few kitchens I’ve designed without visiting the site in person — not my preferred way of working, but I do my best to accommodate each job’s constraints.
The case study in the book covers the project in broad strokes, starting with Kathleen’s initial email stating her interest in working with me, so I won’t duplicate that here. What you won’t find in the book are images of what the kitchen looked like before; this blog is the ideal place to share those. The room was furnished with a mix of cabinets, all in decrepit condition. An original recess in the wall between the kitchen and dining room (below) had had its cabinet insert removed, leaving an impractical vacant space.
Sink corner, before
Kathleen wanted a kitchen that would suit her needs and look at home in the house.
The big picture, before
The plan view layout
Before drawing cabinet elevations I spoke with Kathleen’s cabinetmaker, Jake Korpela at World of Wood. Having made drawings for other clients in the past who hired someone else to build their cabinets, I have learned the importance of emphasizing details – it’s galling to draw a built-in with inset doors hung on traditional butt hinges, half-inset drawer faces and a flush kick only to find that what the cabinetmaker ended up building was indistinguishable (at least, to sophisticated eyes) from something that could have come from a big-box home supplies store.
Stove area, before
Stove area, after
As the after images show, Jake did a bang-up job of following the drawings and building the cabinets. The soapstone counters complement the warm tone of the woodwork, and the room’s trim now matches that of other rooms in the house. The subway tile went in only recently – it wasn’t done when Matt Monte photographed the kitchen for the book.
My second chair. Ugly but strong. And it was the key to my upcoming book.
Before I talk to an author about writing a book for Lost Art Press, I ask them to perform a short exercise beforehand. The exercise helps me understand the real thrust of their book idea.
This is important because we have received book proposals from authors that read “I’d like to write something about doors.”
Here is the exercise we send to potential authors:
Come up with a book title and (if necessary) a secondary title. Book titles should be short – usually no more than five words. And they must relate to the entire book. They should use simple and strong words – no -ing or -ly forms. We will help you with the final title, but it will help you think about your book if you can develop a working title. It helps set the tone for your work. A secondary title can help explain the main title. For example, the secondary title for “Cut & Dried” is “A Woodworker’s Guide to Timber Technology.” You might need a secondary title. You might not.
Write a “high concept.” The “high concept” is a 35-word (or so) pitch that explains the content of the book to someone who is not a woodworker and who has never heard of your work. I imagine it’s how I would explain a book at a dinner party to the person next to me. The “high concept” for “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” was: “You can build almost anything with about 45 tools. This book shows you how to choose good tools, helps you build a chest to protect them and contends that furniture making is a radical act in today’s society.”
Create a table of contents (TOC). A good TOC is an outline for your book. It is the skeleton, and it charts your narrative arc (all good books tell a story). The more detail and thought you put into your TOC, the easier the writing will be. Also good to note: You might rip up a few TOCs before it’s over.
When I start in on a book, I also perform this exercise. But with the vernacular chair book, I wasn’t ready to answer these questions. I had to first figure out if I had an idea that was worth working on for two years.
So for the first half of 2020 I worked on other people’s books and “The Anarchist’s Workbench,” and I didn’t think much about chairs at all.
I did sign up a few new authors for future books, such as getting Megan Fitzpatrick to write a book on Dutch tool chests for a 2021 release. One day we talked about her upcoming book, and I asked how she planned to deal with the different possible construction strategies for the chest’s lid, back and interior.
She replied that she was going to use a “Choose Your Own Adventure” approach, where she would show all of the typical methods and let the reader pick.
And that was when my book on vernacular chairs snapped into focus.
Of all the books I’ve written, my favorites are the ones that I wish I’d had when I was 11 years old. If I’d had “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” or “The Anarchist’s Design Book” when I was a kid, I would have been thrilled.
When I first contracted the chair-building disease in the 1990s – after encountering John Brown’s writing – I bought every book I could find on chairs, even the crappy ones. I read them all once, and most of them twice.
They all left me disheartened. Here’s why: Each author explained how he built his chairs. But they were (mostly) from the tradition that involved green wood, a froe, a shavehorse, a drawknife, a steambox and a bunch of specialty tapering and reaming tools.
Plus the geometry hurt my head.
I didn’t own any of those tools or easy access to green wood. After years of building furniture with dovetails, mortises and tenons, it seemed like few of my skills or tools carried over to chairmaking. That’s when I decided to take a class with David Fleming in Cobden, Ontario, to see if there was any hope for me as a chairmaker.
With Dave’s help I got through the construction of my first chair. Then I came home and – within days – began to build another chair so I wouldn’t forget what I’d learned. I decided that I would just use whatever wood and tools I had on hand and make it work. The chair would probably suck, fall apart or break. But that would be OK. It was just a flammable vessel to help me retain the geometry lessons and the hand skills.
The chair I made was damn ugly, but it didn’t fall apart.
After 20 years of studying vernacular chairs, I have concluded that “use what you have” is a valid way to make a good chair. It’s the strategy that’s been employed all over the world for centuries. You don’t need special tools or skills to make a chair. You just have to really want to build a dang chair.
Megan’s simple phrase, “Choose Your Own Adventure,” is the crux of my next book.
The working title: “The Stick Chair Book.”
The high concept: “Build chairs with the wood and tools around you. Learn to make all the components of a chair – legs, stretchers, arms, sticks, crest – with a wide variety of materials, tools and methods. Then combine these parts however you like into a pleasing, comfortable and sturdy chair.”
That’s 46 words and a little long. Oh well.
Then I vomited out the book’s TOC in less than an hour.
There are a dozen ways to make each chair component, from using a band saw down to a block plane. You don’t need riven wood. Straight grain is straight grain, no matter how you find it. You don’t need any special equipment to make a good chair. These disparate components can be combined in 1,000 ways to make 1,000 different chairs. And the geometry is easy once you realize that it’s the numbers and math that are holding you back.
I knew in a second that this book is something I’d gladly devote two years (or more) to. It’s the chair book I wish I’d owned in 1998.
— Christopher Schwarz
Read other posts from the “Making Book” series here.
The following is excerpted from “The Art of Joinery,” by Joseph Moxon. It includes lightly edited text of Moxon’s landmark work on joinery, as well as commentary on every one of Moxon’s sections on tools and techniques by Christopher Schwarz.
S. 26. The use of the saw in general. In my former Exercises, I did not teach you how to choose the tools a smith was to use because it is a smith’s office to make them. And because in those Exercises I [discussed] making the iron work and steel work in general and the making excellently of some tools in particular, which might serve as a general notion for the knowledge of all smith’s workmanship, especially to those who should concern themselves with smithing. But to those who shall concern themselves with joinery, and not with smithing, it will be necessary that I teach them how to choose their tools that are made by smiths, that they may use them with more ease and delight, and make both quicker and nearer work with them.
Moxon’s saw wrest. This old-school tool is designed to set a set of teeth with one twist of the wrist.
All sorts of saws for joiners’ use are to be sold in most ironmongers’ shops, but especially in Foster Lane, London. Choose those that are made of steel {for some are made of iron} for steel of itself is harder and stronger than iron. You may know the steel saws from iron saws thus: The steel saws are generally ground bright and smooth and are {the thickness of the blade considered} stronger than iron saws. But the iron saws are only hammer hardened, and therefore if they could be so hard, yet they cannot be so smooth, as if the irregularities of the hammer were well taken off with the grindstone. See it be free from flaws and very well hammered and smoothly ground {that is, evenly ground}. You may know if it be well hammered by the stiff bending of it; and if it be well ground {that is, evenly ground} it will not bend in one part of it more than in another. For if it do[es], it is a sign that [the] part where it bends most is either too much ground away or too thin[ly] forged in that place. But if it bend into a regular bow all the way and be stiff, the blade is good. It cannot be too stiff because they are but hammer hardened and therefore often bow when they fall under unskillful hands, but [they] never break unless they have been often bowed in that place.
The edge with the teeth is always thicker than the back because the back follows the edge. And if the edge should not make a pretty wide [enough] kerf, [and even] if the back [of the saw] does not strike [jam] in the kerf, yet a little irregular bearing or twisting of the hand awry might stop [the blade and] bow the saw. And {as I said before} with often [frequent] bowing it will break at last.
When workmen light of [find] a good blade, they don’t mind whether the teeth are sharp or deep or set well. For to make them so is a task they take to themselves, and thus they perform it. They wedge the blade of the saw hard into a whetting block, marked P in plate 4. With the handle towards their left hand and the end of the saw to the right, then with a three-square [triangular] file they begin at the left hand end, leaning harder upon the side of the file on the right hand than on that side to the left hand so that they file the upper side of the tooth of the saw aslope towards the right hand, and the underside of the tooth a little aslope towards the left, or almost downright. Having filed one tooth thus, all the rest must be so filed. Then with the saw wrest, marked O, in plate 4, they set the teeth of the saw. That is, they put one of the notches marked a a a of the wrest between the first two teeth on the blade of the saw and then turn the handle horizontally a little towards the end of the saw. That at once turns the first tooth somewhat towards you and the second tooth from you. Then skipping two teeth, they again put one of the notches of the wrest between the third and fourth teeth on the blade of the saw, and then {as before} turn the handle a little towards the end of the saw, and that turns the third tooth somewhat towards you and the fourth somewhat from you. Thus you must skip two teeth at a time and turn the wrest until all the teeth of the saw are set. This setting of the teeth of the saw {as workmen call it} is to make the kerf wide enough for the back to follow the edge. And [each tooth] is set ranker for soft, coarse, cheap stuff, than for hard, fine, and costly stuff. For the ranker the tooth is set, the more stuff is wasted in the kerf. And besides, if the stuff be hard it will require greater labor to tear away a great deal of hard stuff than it will do to tear away but a little of the same stuff.
The pit saw is set so rank for coarse stuff as to make a kerf of almost a quarter of an inch; but for fine and costly stuff they set it finer to save stuff. The whip saw is set somewhat finer than the pit saw. The handsaw and the compass saw [are set] finer than the whip saw. But the tenon saw, frame saw and the bow saw {and the like} are set fine, and [they] have their teeth but very little turned over the sides of their blades so that a kerf made by them is seldom above half a half quarter of an inch [1/16″].
The reason why the teeth are filed to an angle pointing towards the end [toe] of the saw and not towards the handle of the saw or directly straight between the handle and end of the saw is because the saw is designed to cut only in its progress forwards. Man [has] in that activity more strength to rid {in that forward direction} and command of his hands to guide his work than he can have in drawing back his saw. And therefore when he draws back his saw the workman bears it lightly off the un-sawn stuff, which is an ease to his labor, and [this] enables him the longer to continue his several progressions of the saw.
Master workmen, when they direct any of their underlings to saw such a piece of stuff have several phrases for the sawing of it. They seldom say, “Saw that piece of stuff.” But instead, “Draw the saw through it,” “Give that piece of stuff a kerf,” “Lay a kerf in that piece of stuff,” and sometimes {but most unproperly}, “Cut or slit that piece of stuff.” For the saw cannot properly be said to cut or slit the stuff; but it rather breaks or tears away such parts of the stuff from the whole as the points of the teeth prick into. And these parts it so tears away are proportion[ate] to the fineness or rankness of the setting of the teeth.
The excellent [way] of sawing is to keep the kerf exactly in the line marked out to be sawn without wriggling on either or both sides – and straight through the stuff, as workmen call it. That is, in a geometrical term, perpendicular through the upper and underside, if your work requires it, as most work does. But if your work be to be sawn upon is a bevel, as some work sometimes is, then you are to observe that bevel all the length of the stuff.
Analysis Moxon’s entry on saws is interesting because it doesn’t match up well with the line drawings in the plates, which clearly show two European-style frame saws; and because he makes very specific recommendations about what saws to buy, even the name of the street in London.
For the history buff, this long entry suggests that workmen would typically buy their saws (rather than make them) and that they were deeply involved in the sharpening and tuning of them. And – most interestingly – the blades were tapered in their thickness. Latter-day woodworkers tend to send out their saws for sharpening. Perhaps our saws are harder and require less filing. Perhaps we saw less. Perhaps we’re too lazy to learn saw filing. Perhaps all are a bit true.
The other “hand-saw.” Randle Holme’s 1688 work calls the saw above a “hand-saw or a board-saw.”
If you want to buy a saw, Moxon gives you some advice about how to determine junk from a jewel: bend it. If it folds or bends unevenly, it’s junk. If it bends evenly and springs back, buy it. Where the saw bends is the weak point of the saw, where it’s too soft or too thin, and that’s where it will fail when your stroke goes a bit awry.
Today, there’s little to consider about the steel when picking a saw. The steel is universally good, and most of the modern manufacturers even get it from the same mills. The bigger concerns today are how the tool feels in your hand and how well the saw is set up initially. Because most home woodworkers work alone and teach themselves the craft, it’s uncommon to teach yourself to file a saw before you learn to saw.
For his part, Moxon gives you some perfunctory advice for filing and then setting a saw, though nothing that is practically useful for today’s woodworker – though the description of using a saw wrest for setting the teeth is fun to read. Today many woodworkers use an anvil-like setting tool that plunges and bends each tooth to the precise amount of set. Some professional saw sharpeners use a small hammer to tap the teeth in place. In addition to the advice on saw filing and setting, we get to learn some lingo. In other words: “saw” is not a verb. It’s a noun.
The Ohio River’s water level is low enough this week (about 27 feet) to expose a swath of slimy garbage, an encrusted Lime scooter and thousands and thousands of branches and tree trunks.
This morning I walked the shore thinking about the book “Mudlarking” by Laura Mialkem and her fascinating form of archaeology along the foreshore of the Thames river. (She is definitely worth following on Instagram if you like history.)
While I didn’t spot any relics this morning on the Ohio, my eyes were drawn to the weathered branches that were piled up a foot high in places. Some of them were shaped like a chair leg. Others had enough bend to be the crest rail of an armchair.
If you’ve read Christopher Williams’ great book “Good Work: The Chairmaking Life of John Brown,” then you know a bit about Chris’ “one square mile” approach to making chairs. Like many Welsh chairmakers before him, Chris regularly searches the woods and hedges of his surroundings for curved branches that could become chair components.
I picked up a few branches this morning to see how sound they were. Hmm, strong enough for a chair perhaps?
When I need to mentally travel from Point A to Point B, I sit down and think hard. I’ll draw it out on paper like this:
1. Steal the underpants. 2. Convert them to face masks. 3. Profit.
When I need to go from Point I’ll Never Have Another Good Idea to Point It’s 4 a.m. And I Can’t Stop Writing, the process is different. I suspect that I am involved somehow, but I don’t feel involved. I discovered years ago that my mind is more agile when it’s AWOL.
This is true: If I deliberately attempt to think of a good idea for a book, I’ll fail (“Why not build little houses for snails?”). But if I drive alone to Minnesota and stare at the dotted lines for 10 hours, my brain makes connections among things I’ve both forgotten and remember sharply (“Duh, snails already have houses…”).
For this sort of work, the first hour or two of driving is worthless. Time is real and passes slowly. When I finally let that go, however, it’s like falling asleep, going into a trance or being hypnotized. I can drive for four hours and barely notice.
I use familiar music as the backdrop. Nothing challenging or new. If I really want to trance out, I put on Modest Mouse’s album “The Moon and Antarctica.” I once listened to that album four times in a row on a trip.
I can hear the “tsk tsks” from where you are sitting. Yet, I’ve never had a car wreck when I do this. My lizard-esque midbrain is still in control of the steering wheel and foot pedals. But the frontal lobe is lost.
Oh, did I mention that I don’t do drugs (other than beer, and not while driving)?
So I’m in the car on a trip to Minnesota in November to talk to a woodworking guild there. I’m going to build a chair for an audience. It’s no big deal because I’ve built this chair 20 times. So instead I think about my earlier idea for a series of books on vernacular chairs – one book for each culture.
Gawd, that was a wrong idea. But my mind drifts to what I like about these chairs. No ornament. You work with what you have. Simple joints. Few tools.
Soon I slip into a trance. I don’t remember what music was playing this time. I’m going to guess it was Harry Smith’s “American Anthology of Folk Music.” Every song in that collection is well worn like a river pebble for me. And some songs seem designed to induce a trance. Listen to “Present Joys” or “Rocky Road” by the Alabama Sacred Harp Singers five times in a row and tell me you haven’t seen the other side.
By the time I get to Minneapolis I have suffocated then squished my initial idea for the book. Oh look, I have arrived early. And I need new boots. So I try to shake off the drive, find a shoe store and spend some time thinking about footwear and pronation instead.
With the boot problem licked, I walk across the street to get some lunch, still in a bit of a fog from the road. Reluctantly, I order a beer with my porketta sandwich. I hate drinking in the middle of the day because I always feel like crap for hours after. But the restaurant has a beer I’ve always wanted to try.
As I chew, my brain offers up a book idea. The book is not about stick chairs and how they are different from culture to culture. Instead, it’s about stick chairs and how they are similar from culture to culture, century to century. It doesn’t matter if you’re British, German or Slavic. This tradition belongs to all of us. Call it “The Universal Book of Stick Chairs” maybe?
I finish the beer, and pay the bill. It was a tasty beer, but my body now has to pay the tab. I head to my hotel room and lie down. I curl up, fully clothed.
This, I know, is the second paragraph of the story. It’s better than the first paragraph, but it’s missing something and is making excuses for the first paragraph.
Lucky for me I can lose myself for the next two days in building a chair and answering questions about it from the audience. Then I have a long drive home to Kentucky. Maybe the answer will become clear then.
It won’t.
— Christopher Schwarz
Read other posts from the “Making Book” series here.
