The Lost Art Press storefront is open tomorrow (Saturday, Nov. 9, 2019) from 10 a.m.-5 p.m. for all your woodworking questions and holiday (or personal) shopping needs (in addition to the Lost Art Press books, we have a Crucible Tool lump hammer or two, some scrapers and burnishers, and five holdfasts).
Brendan Gaffney has a chair (or nine) on which he’s working, and I’ll be finishing up the tills on the XL Anarchist’s Tool Chest I’m making for a customer, then – depending on how busy we are – installing the hinges on the lid, and the rest of the hardware. And possibly mixing up some milk paint.
At 2 p.m., I’ll give a free presentation on cutting through dovetails – and tricks for fitting them. (I promise there will be no Shakespeare jokes.)
And late in the day, it’s possible the globe-hopping Christopher Schwarz will make a brief appearance (but only if his plane is on time and he’s not too tuckered out).
Here is an English-style set-up for mortising. The handscrew grasps the workpiece plus a second block that is pinched in your face vise. Like many of the best techniques, this one I learned from a traditionally trained woodworker.
When I decided to build the three projects featured in “The Joiner and Cabinet Maker,” my plan was to assume the role of Thomas W., the book’s young apprentice. I was going to venture forth with a tabula rasa in hand and discard the woodworking knowledge I’d accumulated since childhood, including my preferences for certain techniques and tools. And I would simply build the three projects as Thomas did, and see what I could learn by spending about five months in his shoes.
But as with all projects, things rarely get built “to the print.”
As I started building the Chest of Drawers, which took more than two months of nights and weekends, my youngest daughter started following me whenever I would traipse down the stairwell to my workshop below our living room.
Katy, 8, would watch me work, clean up behind me and ask questions. Then one day as I was paring out some garbage from between some dovetail pins, she asked if she could try it. I handed her the chisel, cradled her hands in mine and let her feel what it was like to slice the end grain of American black cherry.
After making five or so cuts together she asked to do it herself. It was like the time I let go of the handlebars while teaching her to ride a bike. My hands hovered over hers and my mind raced. What the heck was I thinking? Did I think I could catch the chisel before it dove into someplace it wasn’t supposed to go? Surely, I thought, one of us is going to the emergency room this evening.
Some of the tools of the English joiner from Peter Nicholson’s “Mechanic’s Companion” (1832). Note how the blades of the backsaws taper or cant from heel to toe.
Nothing bad happened. Katy pared close to the baseline, and I told her I would finish the job. She asked if she could borrow a saw and wood to practice at the far corner of my bench while I finished up. I agreed.
And it was at this moment that this whole book changed. Throughout the rest of the project I treated Katy as much like an apprentice as I could. She warmed the hide glue. She assisted with glue-ups. She kept the shop clean.
But most of all she asked an endless stream of questions about planes, saws, chisels and wood. When I didn’t have anything for her to do, she would practice planing or sawing on some scrap pine. I kept watch over her out of the corner of my eye and would correct a wayward stance or grip. When I performed an operation, such as sharpening my smoothing plane, I let her watch. Then I asked her to imitate me and sharpen a block plane blade.
I didn’t dive deep into the theory behind everything. I just showed her the best practices I knew, with all the shortcuts and warnings I could think of. Theory, I figured, was something that could come with later study on her part.
All of these tools are essential to building the three projects in this book. Perhaps the most important tool is the workbench. Shown is the famous English workbench design from Peter Nicholson’s “Mechanic’s Companion.”
It wasn’t long before I realized I should take a different tack with my contribution to “The Joiner and Cabinet Maker.” Instead of merely mimicking Thomas’s behavior, I decided to expand my reach. Yes, I would cut dovetails the way that Thomas did. But I would also cut dovetails the way I was taught. And I would compare the approaches and examines the advantages and disadvantages of each.
There wouldn’t be any way I could turn the book into a survey of all the joinery methods out there (that would be a much longer book). But I could offer this book as a guide for my daughter and other woodworkers who wish to explore hand work through two sets of hands.
Here in these pages is what I have learned during my long internship as the editor of two woodworking magazines. As a guy who has gotten to visit the shops of fantastic woodworkers all over the world. As a guy who reads old woodworking books like they were written by Dean Koontz.
And here also is how one anonymous but knowledgeable writer thought woodworking and joinery should be done circa 1839.
There are lessons to be learned from both approaches. And Katy, I hope that by the time you are old enough to read this that you are able to decide for yourself how to go forward in the craft.
Today began with a jolt. After a long morning at the Cliffs of Moher, Lucy and I hopped in our rental car to head to Dublin. But first we had to face Corkscrew Hill.
Just as I finished the last of the hill’s switchbacks, an oncoming lorry (semi) ran us off the road and into a berm. Price: One front tyre. I changed the tyre in the spitting rain, and we limped to a repair shop to get the car sorted and inspected.
This resulted in the best “bon mot” of the trip. We ended up in a Polish tyre shop in a small village. They replaced the tyre in 15 minutes (amazing) and charged us only 65 Euros. As I paid the bill I was shivering and sopping wet – my pants and shoes caked in mud.
“You are on holiday?” the owner asked, looking out at the rain coming down. I nodded. “You are in the wrong country.”
After arriving in Dubin, we each ate a quick sandwich, and I had my first pint of Guinness in Dublin – right across the street from the brewery. Not bad. Then we trekked to the National Museum of Ireland and stormed the furniture on display, including the Irish Country Furniture Exhibit.
When I entered the room, it was like having an eye exam. The lighting was intense and marked by dark slashes, and it bewildered me. After a few seconds, the main display came into focus: 10 chairs in little backlit stalls. The good news: You could get within a few inches of all of the chairs. The bad news, the backlighting was so intense that it was difficult to see (or photograph) the objects.
All of the photos below have been heavily Photoshopped so you can see some details.
I have tons of notes on each of the chairs, but those would bore most of you. So we’ll just look at the photos for now.
After that exhibit, the museum had a good number of other vernacular chairs on display with fairly standard lighting. Those are shown below.
Tomorrow, Lucy and I head to Slane in County Meath to meet with Mark Jenkinson, who runs The Cider Mill and is a long-time chair collector. This should be the highlight of the geeky chair segment of our vacation.
— Christopher Schwarz
P.S. For those of you who think I am abusing Lucy, we are doing lots of non-woodworking stuff. Don’t believe me? I have three words for you: National Leprechaun Museum. And yes, we’re doing the “after dark” adults-only tour. Pray for me.
After years of studying Welsh chairs, my mind turned to the map. Wales has a long history that is intertwined with its neighbors – for better or for worse. Could there be similar chairs built in Scotland, Devon, Cornwall and Ireland?
The answer is, of course, yes. Faced with somewhat similar materials, geography, economy, oppression and tools, it would follow that stick chairs would be the result. After years of reading about Irish vernacular furniture, today Lucy and I plunged head first into it at the Irish Agricultural Museum on the grounds of Johnstown Castle. The museum is mostly about farm implements and transportation. But there are two areas that were captivating.
First was the exhibit on the Irish potato famine of the mid-19th century. This fungal event changed the course of history for Ireland (which lost 25 percent of its population), the United States (which absorbed many of them) and furniture, which became weirdly tied to the famine by antiques dealers. They now label anything a “famine chair” as a result. The dealers are usually wrong, but the association does raise people’s interest in the furniture.
Second was the “Irish Country Furniture Exhibition,” a partnership between the Irish Agricultural Museum and the Irish Country Furniture Society. This exhibit features all manner of vernacular pieces from the 18th to 20th centuries. You could write a book about the fine pieces in this collection. We spent our time focused on the chairs in the exhibit.
Side note. Lucy is now on her third glass of wine. This is our first vacation alone in two decades. She reports: “I like chairs. They looked comfortable. We totally could have gotten over the wire to sit in them but we didn’t because we follow the law; hashtag respect the Irish.”
After almost two hours of examining and photographing the chairs, we headed west to Doolin to see a beautiful sunset and eat some seafood. This evening I’m poring over the hundreds of photos I took and trying to make sense of them. But it takes a while to process the overall forms and their details.
Here are a few snapshots of the chairs I liked in particular.
Oct. 27, 1968: A few stars are showing. A light breeze coming up and 26°.
A day for small chores. I mixed up a batch of wood glue very thin and painted the runners on my sled. Tomorrow it will be ready to kick out the door. If I only had a pet caribou to pull it. Snow picking up – big flakes and lots of them.
“Dick’s lightweight sled is held together with 48 mortise-and-tenon joints, a few nails and his thin copper-coated electric fence wire. He put the sled to heavy use each winter, to haul firewood and occasionally meat from wildlife he found.”
This is an excerpt from “The Handcrafted Life of Dick Proenneke” by Monroe Robinson, which we are happily and fully immersed in right now. The italic portion is from Dick’s journals. The quoted portion is commentary from Monroe. — Kara Gebhart Uhl
The Lost Art Press storefront is open tomorrow (Saturday, Nov. 9, 2019) from 10 a.m.-5 p.m. for all your woodworking questions and holiday (or personal) shopping needs (in addition to the Lost Art Press books, we have a Crucible Tool lump hammer or two, some scrapers and burnishers, and five holdfasts).
