Lost Art Press

Editor’s note: Congratulations to Bruce Chaffin, the winner of our True Tales of Woodworking Contest, and a $100 gift certificate to Lost Art Press! Thanks to everyone who entered in celebration of the release of Nancy Hiller’s new edition of “Making Things Work: Tales of a Cabinetmaker’s Life.” We enjoyed reading every one of the entries – and will run a few more of our top choices next week. Nancy will also be sharing some of the entries on her Making Things Work blog, so be sure to tune in there, too!
— Fitz

Maybe you’ve built something that went exactly to plan or came out better than you had hoped.

Maybe your project started out as, say, a bed frame and ended up a bench.

Maybe the partially assembled parts gathered dust for years.

Or maybe it was doomed from the start.

In 2014, a contractor I worked with contacted me with a commission – his client, a tough-as-nails restaurateur in Center City, Philadelphia, got her landlord to pay for a planter box to be installed in the tree pit outside her upscale establishment. As a sign of defiance, she wanted it to be expensive. I liked the sound of this. For once, cost was not my problem.

She wanted the box built out of clear cedar, painted white, in keeping with the restaurant’s black-and-white color scheme. To match the interior woodwork, it was to be V-panels, which translated into $150 for the router bit set. Not my problem, the client would pay for it. She also wanted the box filled with dirt and planted, so I needed to build a small interior box to go around the tree trunk. My wife (repeatedly) insisted that this was going to kill the tree. My response? Not my problem.

I went to the site to take measurements and discovered that the tree pit was cut out of the sidewalk right next to the curb. Then and there, I knew that someday a car, truck, or the #12 or #17 bus was going to hit this box. Not my problem.

The contractor and I met again to agree on construction details and to come up with a plan — the four sides and inner box would be built off-site and assembled (Dominos, pocket screws, and glue) around the tree. With the chances of getting good miter joints for the rail cap on-site being slim to none and Slim just rode out of town, the rail cap was also going to be constructed off-site and hoisted over the young tree. We also agreed that someday this box was going to get hit.

Milling the boards where I rented shop time went without incident, as did construction at the builder’s shop space. Much as I hated seeing beautiful wood being painted, I enjoyed the luxury of having someone else do it.

Installation day saw the contractor, three helpers and I descend with the unassembled boxes and necessary paraphernalia, which we scattered over the sidewalk. As we dodged traffic, I was thankful that my strategy called for placing the bar clamps parallel to 20th Street and that the tree was not centered in the pit, so we could check diagonals for square. I handed the No. 2 guy a drill and screws and he said, “Don’t you want to do it? You built it.” I said, “Nope, you’re good.” Minutes later, he climbed out of the box and said, “Man, that really sucked.” I replied, “That’s why I wanted you to do it.” The rail cap, lifted over the tree by someone younger and taller than me, was screwed to the box, and the inner box was screwed together. As we admired our work, we pondered taking bets about how long the box would last before a car, truck or the #12 or #17 bus demolished it.

My travels in town often took me by my box, and I would express amazement to my companions that it had survived. Then sure enough, this January, a little more than 4 ½ years after the box was installed, I saw that it had finally met with a car, truck, or either the #12 or #17 bus. I didn’t feel anger or sadness. I simply said to myself, “Not my problem.”

— Bruce Chaffin

Editor’s note: Thanks to everyone who entered our True Tales of Woodworking Contest, in celebration of the release of Nancy Hiller’s new edition of “Making Things Work: Tales of a Cabinetmaker’s Life.” We enjoyed reading every one of the entries – it was difficult to choose a winner (a good problem to have!). We’re running some of our top choices here (lightly edited to match LAP editorial style), and will announce and share the winning story on Saturday, Feb. 1. Nancy will also be sharing some of the entries on her Making Things Work blog, so be sure to tune in there, too!
— Fitz

In the 1980s, I made and sold Windsor chairs, using mostly old techniques and tools. Mike Dunbar’s “Windsor Chairmaking” was my handbook, and Santore’s “Windsor Style in America” was my inspiration. One friend’s 100-acre forest provided the trees, which I cut down with a chain saw; another friend’s gorgeous Percheron mare, a draft horse with hooves almost the size of dinner plates, hauled them out.

Instruction was hard to find. I remembered how scary it had been, as a kid in junior high shop class, “poking a bar of steel into a spinning chunk of wood”* – it hadn’t turned out well.

Today, excellent instruction is available on-demand in downloads and streaming videos; Peter Galbert’s wonderful materials come to mind. Forty years ago, a beginner would have to go to the teacher. After wasting four months trying unsuccessfully to figure out how to turn wood, I finally found a mentor, 300 miles to the south, whom I met at a workshop 300 miles west.

One of the most challenging things for me was learning how to drill the seat for the legs. I quickly experienced the heartbreak of destroying a carved seat by drilling the legs wrong. The technique shown in Dunbar’s book used two angle gauges and a hand-held brace with a spoon bit; that didn’t work for me. I found it easier to use a single line of sight with a single angle gauge (a common technique, today). I used an antique Delta floor-standing drill press with a foot pedal to bring the bit down into the wood. That left both hands free to hold the big wooden chair seat in position. To get the correct angle for the legs, I built a wooden tilting table that bolted to the work surface. It worked great and I could tilt it either way – front or back.

I often demonstrated chairmaking at the local Farmer’s Market. On one of these occasions, a young guy watched me from a distance. Eventually, he showed up at my door, introduced himself, and said he would love to watch me work, and learn how to build a chair in my workshop. I quickly realized that Eddie had a lot of potential; he had worked with mentors far more talented than I was, repairing 17th and 18th century furniture, stuff that I had seen only in museums. I taught him by simply showing him what I did and explaining why I did it. I said there were probably better ways to do all of it, but I just hadn’t found them.

I suggested the best way to make his first chair was to find a big fireplace, so he could burn his first attempt; he shouldn’t take it too seriously – that would minimize the stress. Eddie ignored me, of course; he was determined to make his first attempt a really great piece of work. And he was doing quite well; he spent several days carefully cutting and carving a seat to a very pleasing shape, and then turned some very nice legs to go with it.

Eddie was very capable, so I let him work pretty much on his own, unless he asked for help. I occasionally took a peek to keep him out of trouble. The challenge was teaching without interfering, finding that line between oversight and overbearing. I showed him how to set up the drill press to bore the holes in the seat, and then watched from a distance. I knew how easy it was to reverse the angle of the table, and have the chair legs gathered tight together on the floor, like a goat on a rock.

I saw him setting it up wrong, and I just couldn’t bear to let him destroy that beautifully carved seat. I also wanted him to learn to think about what he was doing. I didn’t take my eyes off him as I quietly backed off into the far corner of the windowless shop. I waited to see if the light would go on in his head, but he pressed on. When he finally had everything ready (and backward), Eddie reached up and flipped the switch on the drill press motor. I pulled the switch in corner. The shop went dark, the machine fell silent, and Eddie yelled “NOOOO!!!!!” as he finally realized what he’d been about to do.

When we finally stopped laughing in the dark, I turned the power back on and we got back to work. His first chair turned out very nice, and he still has it decades later.

— Ed Rumsey

*David Fisher’s colorful reason for carving rather than turning bowls:
“There’s something about a twenty pound chunk of wood spinning around at five hundred rpm that makes me not want to poke it with a bar of steel. I like my chunks of wood to sit still in front of me.”
https://davidffisherblog.wordpress.com/2016/02/07/carving-round-bowls-can-be-super/

We have revived seven of our favorite T-shirt designs – including our first shirt with the slogan “Rude Mechanicks Since 1678” – and they are now available in a wide variety of sizes and colors.

During the last 13 years, I don’t think we’ve made a profit on T-shirts, but they are fun and we end up with some high-fashion rags in the end.

We’re making these new shirts through a print-on-demand service, which is why we can offer so many colors and sizes from XS to 4XL. But because of the way the shirts are made, here are some important details:

• We cannot accept returns on these shirts unless they are defective. So please check the sizes and colors with care. These shirts are cut slimmer than some other brands. The sizing is similar to the American Apparel shirts we used to sell.
• The logos and wording are in black on all the shirts. So the contrast will be low if you put a black logo on a dark blue shirt. We like this effect, which is why we offer it. We couldn’t offer both white and black logos because of the technical limits of the print-on-demand service. Apologies.

During the last 13 years we’ve had many requests to bring back old designs. Getting these shirts back in the store took a shirtload of technical work from Megan Fitzpatrick and John Hoffman. We had to find old files, rebuild certain images and then clear a bunch of technical hurdles to integrate the print-on-demand service with our store. Fingers crossed it all works.

The seven designs we brought back are:

• Cutting Deals Since 1678
• Rude Mechanicks Since 1678
• Boring Since 1678
• The Anarchist’s Tool Chest
• Trying Stuff Since 1678
• Divide & Conquer
• I Shall Die Trying

There were a few designs we didn’t revive (“Stop Staring at My Chest,” for one) because the sales were so miserable we didn’t see the point.

— Christopher Schwarz