We are putting the finishing touches on Nancy Hiller’s “Kitchen Think” book this week. It should go to press late this week or early next. We just have to make some copy editing changes from Kara Gebhart Uhl and tweak a drawing.
We will open up pre-publication orders soon. The book will be hardbound, 8.5” x 11”, printed on coated, matte paper and 368 pages long. Full color throughout. And thanks to our long-time relationship with our printing plant in Tennessee, we can sell this book for $38 (that’s about $6 less than I thought it would be).
The content is, of course, great. And we’ll be writing more about it soon. The book is a great mix of practical how-to, hard-won lessons on kitchen design and lots of inspiring examples from Nancy and a few other woodworkers.
Linocut Prints
If you ordered a linocut print made by Molly Brown for “Good Work: The Chairmaking Life of John Brown,” I have good news. Molly has made all the prints, and they are on their way to the United States now. As soon as they land here, we’ll ship them out. Thanks for your patience. And Molly deserves a gold star. She finished these prints at the height of her pregnancy and while taking care of a newborn.
Soft Wax
Katherine’s last batch of soft wax sold out so quickly that she was inspired to make another batch. They are available in her store now.
Yoav’s drawing for his knockdown table “Merritt,” made with reclaimed materials, inspired by the Merritt Parkway
Imagine this: You’re a teacher of woodworking. Your students are kids. The school where you teach is in a big city, and most of your students live nearby. It’s March 2020: Your school, along with much of the rest of the world, shuts down in response to the pandemic. But your job is to go on teaching. What do you do?
A typical fourth-grade project is a walking stick made from a branch
One of Yoav’s sixth-grade students
A typical sixth-grade project: a saw
This is the reality that hit Yoav Liberman three months ago. His students and their families were in lockdown, confined to their homes in New York City, which has suffered some of the world’s highest numbers of infection and death from Covid-19. Instead of teaching face-to-face in a workshop at Manhattan’s Rudolf Steiner school, as he has for the past eight years, he was expected to teach remotely, via computer screen. “How do I participate in this in a meaningful way?” he wondered, aware that his students lacked access not just to workbenches and woodworking tools, but also to lumber. With parks closed, and few trees on the streets, “even getting them a branch would be almost impossible.”
Fortunately for Yoav’s students, their teacher has a lifetime’s experience of turning challenges into opportunities.
Yoav with his father, Eliezer, and brother, Dan
Yoav was born on the outskirts of Tel Aviv, Israel, and has one younger brother, Dan. His dad, Eliezer, was a machinist, handyman and maritime officer who worked as chief engineer on a merchant ship. Thanks to his position, Eliezer could bring his family along in the summers; Yoav recalls two-month voyages from Haifa to the Mediterranean, then on to America and Canada. It was the late 1960s. Ships were small. The world was not connected as it is today. “Those voyages are a very important part of my childhood memories,” he says. They might stop in Athens, where they’d pay a quick visit to the Acropolis, then in a day they’d be in Florence. Another day would pass and they were in Marseilles; then they’d cross the Atlantic. In addition to providing a dazzling introduction to different landscapes and architectural styles, those vacations opened Yoav’s eyes to the world of engineering and mechanics. “I was seeing the world not from a luxurious point, but from a merchant ship perspective,” he explains – and as often as not, he was immersed in the guts of the ship, because it was his father’s job to keep things running, through storms as well as calm seas.
Liberman ancestors in Czechoslovakia, 1930s. Yoav’s father is at far right.
Yoav’s maternal grandparents
When Yoav was 6, his father died, an experience that had a powerful effect on the course of his life. Aside from the emotional wounds caused by such a loss, especially at a young age, he and his family were forced to learn a multitude of new skills. His mother (today, a retired school teacher) and grandfather were now responsible for fixing things around the house. Yoav has a vivid recollection of watching his mom mix epoxy. “In other homes the only glue that people used to use was silly contact cement, [but] my mom kept two epoxy tubes that my dad got from one of his trips to the USA and taught her how to use.”
Yoav with his maternal grandfather
“I was not such a good student in elementary school,” he says. “My mom said that I ‘withered inward’ after my dad died. Without any academic achievements to be proud of, I was destined to attend a vocational high school, which actually ended up as a godsend. With a curriculum that included machining, plastic and polymer studies, robotics and electronics, and most importantly, technical drawing, I was in heaven. At home I [built] scale models of ships and planes, and in school I leaned over a metal lathe to turn a hammer head or held an acetylene torch to build a small garden stool.”
Like all able-bodied Israeli citizens, Yoav did a compulsory stint in the armed forces – in his case, the navy – then considered going on to higher education. He didn’t want to study pure engineering, but he wanted to do something involving art that would also be functional. There were no furniture making programs in Israel at the time, so he thought “I’ll just try architecture. You design buildings and furniture, get training that’s lofty in terms of art and principles of design but also down-to-earth training in materials and construction.”
The summer before he started his studies at the Israel Institute of Technology (Technion), he worked for a family friend who had a woodshop. The work was low-level and mundane, but that shop launched him on his lifelong project of collecting wood scraps and other materials that most people throw away.
With his mother, Ruth (lower right), aunt, uncle and cousins, mid-1990s
Yoav completed a five-year program in architecture at Technion. It was the early 1990s, before widespread publishing on the internet. His teachers were architects, not woodworkers. To get his woodshop fix he subscribed to Fine Woodworking and devoured the content. As his interest in woodworking grew, so did his collection of tools.
After graduation he “gave architecture a chance,” as he puts it, by working at a couple of small firms. But he spent his spare time building and restoring furniture. While he enjoyed some of the sketching and 3-D work in his architectural apprenticeship, he was put off by the layers of mediation between the clients, the work and himself. “You’re so remote,” he explains. “There are so many hurdles to jump over. So much red tape. Some are completely justified, [though] as a junior architect you’re even more remote. But working on furniture is so in tune. [You’re] so in touch with the material and the processes. It’s fulfilling.” An invitation to teach a class in furniture refurbishing and design at a small DIY center in Tel Aviv proved pivotal. “I was much more interested in that than in working in front of the computer to compile square footages for a building my boss designed.”
During his apprenticeship Yoav had also taught architecture, drawing and design as an adjunct professor at a community college. He kept that work going and began writing about furniture for a DIY magazine in Israel, as well as teaching classes in furniture refurbishing.
Yoav
In the late ’90s Yoav’s (now-former) partner moved to Cambridge, Mass., to begin work toward a doctorate at Harvard. While visiting his partner, Yoav discovered the Worcester Center for Crafts; he made some inquiries and showed them his portfolio. Impressed, they accepted him as an artist in residence and sponsored his student visa. “It was a dream,” says Yoav. “The magazines were from New England, and many of the people [whose articles] I read were working in the Boston area.” It felt like destiny.
Yoav moved to Massachusetts in 2000. He lived in Cambridge and commuted to Worcester. His job: to build a meaningful body of work. He worked long days, grateful for access to the school’s resources and the opportunity to think about things he wanted to build. He also took classes in turning, jewelry making and glass. Looking back, he says, “I was in Candy Land.”
His collection of salvaged materials grew; he was constantly thinking about how to save stuff from being destroyed or thrown away. Reclaimed materials became the hallmark of his work. The city of Worcester contributed to his stash: He scored a bunch of heart pine beams from a mill that had been demolished for a highway. The firewood bin at the craft school provided riches, too. As Yoav saw it, “I was happy not to allow this material to be lost to the landfill but regain respect from its users or viewers for as long as the furniture I built would last.”
He sought out other teachers and found his way to the Powderhouse Woodworkers – Mitch Ryerson, John Everdell, Judy Kensley McKie and Nathan Rome, who had set up a co-op in an old millwork building rented from Tufts University; there was a communal machine space and kitchen, with open studios. Each member of the co-op had his or her own style. Yoav worked with John and Mitch; he particularly admired John for the complexity and variety of materials with which he worked and calls him “a virtuoso in using bronze and copper and stone and ebony.” Yoav wrote an article about John for Woodwork magazine.
Yoav apprenticed with the group on and off for about six years. Asked how he made a living, he replies: “My partner got a stipend from Harvard. We lived in a grad dorm. I was riding my bike to my mentors’ studio. We survived on his stipend plus my savings and some family support. We were very frugal. Officially I was a student, so I was not supposed to work.” (He has since been granted a green card.)
Those years overlapped with other work. After finishing his residency in Worcester, Yoav found himself without a studio, but he was offered an artist in residence/tutorial position at Harvard’s Eliot House, which had a shop in the basement. There he would mentor students from Harvard who wanted to learn woodworking He created a program of instruction and launched an annual furniture show, took students on field trips and invited fellow woodworkers and speakers, such as Tom Lie-Nielsen and Albert LeCoff, to give presentations. The affiliation with Harvard opened other doors; he was invited to write a blog for American Woodworker; he wrote articles for Woodwork magazine; he pursued his own furniture projects. This was toward the end of 2009.
For four years he also taught three-month stints in furniture design, sometimes with cardboard as the primary material, for college interior and industrial design programs in Israel.
Light fixture by student at Shenkar in Israel (Photo: Sasha Flit)
Open storage by student at Shenkar in Israel (Photo: Sasha Flit)
Around 2010 he was accepted to an artist in residence program at Purchase College. It was a prestigious position that came with a studio, stipend, room and board in exchange for teaching one class and spending the rest of his time on his own work. He calls the experience “formidable” and says that during those four months he built his most important body of work to date.
“Attn: John Everdell” is a campaign-style piece inspired by the form of a highboy. It incorporates salvaged boards from a packing crate addressed to Yoav’s mentor, John Everdell
“Merritt,” assembled (Photo: Bill Hoo)
“Merritt,” knocked down (Photo: Bill Hoo)
“Ascent” (Photo: Bill Hoo)
Just as that residency was drawing to a close, he met James, a psychologist in private practice, who is now his partner. “James is also a wonderful bread maker, knitter and gardener,” Yoav adds.
James, Asher and Yoav
When American Woodworker was bought by Popular Woodworking, Yoav met Megan Fitzpatrick. He’d been thinking about writing a book about building furniture with reclaimed wood; Megan was enthusiastic and had Scott Francis, her books editor, get in touch to discuss possibilities. “That was an affirmation by two people I appreciate,” he says. “If she thinks it’s a good idea, I will put the time into it.” He wanted the book to include work by others as well as his own – people from all over the world, in different disciplines. “The purpose is to let us pause a little and think, how can we utilize any sort of discarded material that has still so much potential? Sometimes the potential exceeds that of virgin-cut wood.”
Yoav spent two years working on the book, “Working with Reclaimed Wood,” which was published in 2018. By then he had made a home with James in the greater New York City region, adopted their son, Asher, who is now 5, and was working at his current job as a teacher of woodworking in the city. Ordinarily, he commutes four days a week.
So here’s how Yoav faced his reality this past March.
He started with a process of elimination: What kind of woodworking-related activity can you do with your hands when you don’t have access to woodworking tools? He thought back to the design classes he’d taught in Israel, where students built pieces out of corrugated cardboard. It’s made from wood. It’s a readily available material – in fact, with so many parents confined to home and ordering products online instead of shopping in stores, there’s been an excess of cardboard to dispose of. And all you need to work with cardboard are scissors. (If you really want to go wild, Yoav adds, you could splurge on a $5 utility knife.)
His next challenge was to come up with a project that would be appropriate for each of the grades. He consulted the students’ other teachers. Fourth-graders were studying local geography; in Manhattan, that means skyscrapers. So Yoav decided to have his fourth-grade students make the Empire State Building. He found some plans of the building online, made a cutting list and templates, then sent the kit to parents to print out. Now the kids are making the building, right down to the spire and antenna. (You can read Yoav’s blog post about the project here.) He meets with students for half an hour a week via Zoom; sometimes he tutors individuals. “It’s such a shift in teaching,” he says, acknowledging the irony of the situation. “[Ordinarily] we say ‘No screens, no electronics!’”
The fifth-grade students are making animals – panthers, a dolphin, a penguin, a whale. Each student brings her or his own interpretation of the material to the project. For example, one wanted to sand the edges but had no sandpaper; she used her mother’s nail file instead.
Ninth-graders are tackling more complicated designs. They started with a box-jointed cardboard box. (Did you get that?) After that they moved on to furniture. Yoav has encouraged them to use notched designs, which can be elegant. Other designs involve layering the cardboard for stability. Origami, he notes, provides yet another way to think about using cardboard as a furniture-making material.
Adapting to new circumstances. Whale, bear, Empire State Building and tools, including a laptop and camera.
As they near semester’s end, Yoav has been teaching the older students (and some of their parents, who couldn’t resist getting involved) to carve simple designs in basswood purchased online – decorative patterns, animals, letters – with a carving knife. Constantly thinking about how to keep them from cutting their fingers, Yoav recommended that they invest in mesh tape. “You sit in front of a camera,” he explains; “the student is miles away from you.”
Odds are, he’s inspiring a new generation of makers who will design and build innovative furnishings out of this abundant waste material, cardboard.
I have finished writing the third and final book in the “anarchist” series, “The Anarchist’s Workbench,” which will be released in August 2020.
We planned to release it at Handworks as a surprise (indeed, I am exactly like a bearded Beyoncé). But because the pandemic has postponed Handworks, we’ll release the book as soon as we can get it to the printer.
What’s it about? Why badgers, of course. Specifically, badgers and ham sandwiches.
While I would love to write about badgers, “The Anarchist’s Workbench” is the culmination of 20 years of researching, writing about and building ancient workbenches. My ideas about benches have shifted during the last 20 years thanks to new research, getting to work on many different forms of benches and me becoming OK with saying to myself: You got that wrong.
The book is also the answer to the question I get asked the most: What is your favorite workbench? After 20 years of thought, I figured it out. During the last few months I built that bench. And I’ve documented its construction and all its details for the book.
The bench itself is a reflection of the way I live. It is built from sustainable and (mostly) inexpensive raw materials. It is designed to make furniture that defies planned obsolescence. And above all else, I built this workbench simply as a practical tool for making furniture. It is not an expression of my mastery of the craft or my success at amassing capital.
That’s where this bench comes from. And I suspect that most old workbenches came from the same place.
What’s left to do with the book? I’m turning over my third draft to some editors next week who (I hope) will think it’s worth publishing. I’m now drawing the illustrations for the book. And then I’ll lay out its pages.
In the meantime, I’ll be writing more about the research and hard decisions that led me here.
— Christopher Schwarz
P.S. I am sure many of you are wondering how this book will be different from my other workbench books. All I can say is that this one is written by the 51-year-old me, who has a lot of miles on the odometer. The 28-year-old me would have been happy to have this book.
Though the world probably doesn’t need another workbench book, I can’t control the ideas that grip my mind. If the book doesn’t sell, we’ll stack it up with all the unsold posters at the warehouse.
As you can see, Bean the three-legged cat is the worst wax salesman we have hired. Instead of doing something cute to encourage you to buy wax, he just sits and looks like someone poked him in the butt.
My youngest daughter, Katherine, has made up a big batch of soft wax this week and you can purchase it in her etsy store here. Soft wax is an easily applied, high-solvent finish. It’s ideal for finishing the inside of casework. It helps the look of antiques with aged finishes. It coats Crucible tools before they are shipped out.
Don’t use it on your beard. Or your three-legged cat. (The FDA has found it ineffective for growing back a missing leg.)
There are more details on soft wax and how we make it with a waterless process here in Covington in the etsy description. Katherine cooks it up herself. Bottles it. Ships it out.
Bean does not help, as you can clearly see in the photo.
Work in progress. Partially finished elevation of the north wall, showing the planned corner unit and set of narrow drawers to the left of the stove.
After a long hiatus from shop time thanks to Indiana’s stay-at-home directive, I’ve been back in full force over the past two weeks. Sure, I could have kept working on the kitchen — my shop is next to our house. But why turn my work area into a life-size game of Tetris with cabinets as playing pieces a moment before that crowding was really necessary? Better to leave the roughsawn oak and sheets of plywood flat until we could firm up the schedule for delivery and installation.
Every kitchen I’ve worked on has entailed a few changes along the way. I do my best to help clients make the most important decisions early on. I also encourage them not just to order their plumbing fixtures and appliances, but to have them on hand before I start to cut materials, because reworking cabinets can get expensive quickly.
On this job we’ve done a lot of things differently because of the ongoing pandemic. With no clear idea how long the stay-at-home directive was going to last, my clients, Jenny and Ben, were in less of a hurry to order appliances, etc. and have them delivered — they’ve been working full-time from home in the company of their three children, whose schools were closed for in-person classes. Ordinarily we would have met to discuss a few questions that have cropped up; instead, we’ve hammered things out by email and phone. I’ve dropped off samples of milk paint at their back door. Everything has been slightly off — at times, surreal.
Soapstone slabs at Quality Surfaces near Spencer, Indiana
Our only recent meeting in person took place at a local stone yard, where Jenny and Ben fell in love with a slab of medium-gray soapstone. Compared to other stone, such as granite, this one is relatively soft, so I wanted them to be aware of how it would likely age. I sent snapshots from our kitchen, which has pale gray soapstone counters, and emphasized that even though we treat our counters with care, there’s significant wear along the front edge at the sink. This stone would require extra coddling.
They weighed my warnings. Then, intoxicated by the beauty of the stone, they concluded they had to have it.
To compensate, they decided to use a different kind of sink. The plans included an undermount sink, but after seeing pictures of our counter, Ben and Jenny decided to buy an enameled cast iron apron front, to do away with the especially vulnerable strip of stone across the front. Good thing I hadn’t started building the cabinets — not only did this change the doors from full height to more like 20″; it also meant the sink base would have to be 2″ longer.
Comparing milk paint samples (which have a topcoat of the same water-white conversion varnish we’ll be using on the cabinets) to colors in the stone
The second major change has been to the kitchen’s inside corner. In our earliest discussions I’d gone through my usual reasons for recommending a simple stack of drawers instead of attempting to use the blind space that would otherwise be wasted, but Ben and Jenny decided to go with a corner optimizer.
The unit holds four baskets — two on the left, and two on the right, with one above the other on each side. Here Tony is modeling the unit closed, with only the lower left basket in place.
Full disclosure: I had never installed one of these units, which I first learned of thanks to Craig Regan. It seemed like a better choice than the half-moon blind corner pull-out I once experimented with in my own kitchen (more about this in my forthcoming book); it’s sturdy, better looking and smooth in operation. But once I had it in the cabinet I could see trouble down the line: Unless you’re meticulous about pulling the unit straight out and extending it fully before you pull the second half forward, the face frame of the corner cabinet and the face of the cabinet next to it would get scratched and banged up in short order. For a family of five who really use their kitchen, it seemed like a bad idea.
The first step: pull the primary pair of baskets forward. You have to pull them all the way out before attempting to move them over so that you can pull the secondary baskets out.
Fully open. The primary side [only one basket is installed on each side here] pulls over to the side of the cabinet opening, freeing it up so you can pull the secondary baskets forward.I thought through every likely scenario with the corner optimizer and decided to recommend we nix it in favor of some intelligently-designed, fully-functional drawers; depending on what we discover during demolition, the blind area in the corner will probably become a storage cabinet in the wall flanking the stairs to the basement.
A set of four capacious drawers on full-extension slides will take the place of the original corner optimizer and the 12″-wide drawers that would have flanked it.
To those who complain about old-timers being unwilling to change/jump on the bandwagon of The Newest And Greatest Thing, I offer this story as one reason why some of us whose livelihood depends on this kind of work prefer to recommend the products we know well. We’re not being lazy, fearful or unimaginative. We might have learned something over the decades from our mistakes. In the future, if clients ask me about the advisability of using a corner optimizer such as this one (and I am aware that this is not the only style available), I will factor what I know about how they use their kitchen into my response, as I do with every other detail of kitchen design.
If anyone would like to buy this 15″ blind corner unit at a discount (it makes a great climbing frame/nap place/carnival ride for a cat), let me know in the comments.
