The Deckle Edge, “a blog about books, libraries, books stores, and the ideas they contain,” recently posted a detailed review of Marc Adams’ new book, “The Difference Makers.”
In his review, Matthew Boutte, a Texas-based finance executive who is “a lover of many things, among them books,” writes: “As I step back and review ‘The Difference Makers’ as a cohesive work, rather than 30 individual profiles, two distinct themes emerge. The first of them is that of craftsmanship and how it is defined.”
Boutte shares some quotes from some featured makers as well as his own thoughts on craftsmanship, including this idea: “Craftsmanship then, is the relentless pursuit of excellence; the best you are able to do.”
Boutte then writes: “The second theme relates to the first: ‘The Difference Makers’ clearly illustrates that these people were driven to pursue excellence, to pursue craftsmanship, by something internal that would not be quenched and in virtually every case, resulted in years of economic hardship or the willingness to allow their art to be their passion while some other pursuit provided shelter and food.”
Boutte’s review is interesting in that while so much of the focus on this book has been on individual makers, he takes the time to point out some connecting threads – the themes that run true for many of those featured. Consider his observations about the number of makers featured who are left-handed compared to right.
You can read the entire piece here and be sure to check out Boutte’s other thoughtful reviews as well.
Oh, and Matthew, in answer to your question (“Embossed on the cover. What’s the story here?!?”), the diestamp on the interior cloth cover is a Tree of Life image that dovetails Marc’s preface and introduction. Thank you for finding it and noticing it, and thank you for the kind review!
Good luck finding steel hinges for this project that have the right look and bend in the right place to fit in the partition. I was unsuccessful in finding some off-the-rack hinges to make this part easy. But altering your hinges to fit is easy work – the barrier for most woodworkers is that hinges are made of metal and that can sap your confidence.
Don’t let it. There are lots of cool steel strap hinges out there that are sold with straight-as-an-arrow leaves. Bending them is simple work with just a metal-jawed vise and a hammer. If you still have some trepidation, purchase an extra hinge to practice on.
These hinges are placed using the same rules for placing the crossstrengtheners on the Packing Box. First calculate the overall length of the box. Position the hinges so their centerlines are half this distance apart.
Install the hinge with a single screw. Then mark where the leaf intersects the case. Make this mark underneath the leaf.
The hinges are recessed into the top edge and face of the back of the Schoolbox. First, cut away the notch on the top edge of the box for the hinges. Install the unbent hinges into the mortise using the screw hole that is nearest to the hinge pin. Then mark where you want to bend the leaf. Mark your bending line underneath the hinge, right up against the back of the box. Remember: It’s not like folding paper. You need to allow for the thickness of the leaf when bending.
Secure the leaf in a metal-jawed vise so that the leaf you want to bend sticks up from the vise. Clamp the jaws right below the line you marked. Use a hammer to tap the leaf to shape. You want to bend the leaf so that the leaf needs to be recessed into the back.
Clamp the leaf and tap it with a hammer to bend it to a 90° angle. If all goes to plan the leaf should fit against the inside of the Schoolbox. Trace around it, mortise it flush and the hinge should then line up with your original screw hole.
Hold the hinge in its mortise again. Then trace around the hinge to mortise the hinge flush to the inside of the case (this will allow the partition to be removed). Waste away the area where the leaf should go.
Screw the hinges to the carcase of the Schoolbox and get ready to attach the lid. The lid should be slightly oversized because things might shift around during installation. Plus you never know how the slop in the hinge barrels will affect how the top fits.
Set the Schoolbox on its back and elevate it on some spacers. Position the lid on the benchtop and let the hinges fall onto the lid. Drive one screw into each hinge and see how things work.
Once the lid is positioned where you want it, let the lid fall onto the workbench and drive the remainder of the screws. Now you can trim the lid so there’s about 1/16″ of overhang all around. That should be enough for most environments. If you live in an area with wild humidity swings, give yourself 1/8″ of overhang on the front.
Line up the lid as best you can and then attach the hinges to the lid using one screw in each leaf. Note how the Schoolbox is elevated on shims that make the leaves fall without any gaps between the leaves and the lid.
Now you can fix the lock’s hasp into the lid. This is a Friday job (meaning it’s easy). Lock the hasp onto the lockset. Then drop the lid onto the hasp. The hasp has two nibs on it. Strike the lid right where the hasp is. This dents the lid right where these two nibs are.
Unlock the hasp, nestle it into the nibs and trace around the hasp. By this point you should know the drill: Score the waste with a chisel. Remove it with a router plane or a chisel. Then screw the hasp to the underside of the lid.
As far as woodworking goes, you’re almost done. All that is left is to install the moulding around the lid. This moulding receives a chamfer or a bevel that is identical to the one you planed onto the skirt moulding.
Shut the lid and feel all around the edges to see if the lid is squarely on the box. If it’s not, you can shift things around a bit at this point to improve the position of the lid. The two screws allow some pivoting. Do this carefully.
You also can cut the moulding and miter it just like you did the skirt moulding. However, there is one small difference when installing the lid moulding. You have some cross-grain problems that you didn’t have with the skirt moulding. The lid’s return moulding has its grain running at 90° to the grain of the lid.
Here’s how you deal with it: Glue and nail the front piece of moulding just like you did on the front piece of skirt moulding. When you install the returns, glue the miters in the same way you glued the miters for the skirt moulding. But when you glue the back of the lid moulding to the lid, glue only the first few inches up by the miter. Leave the rest of the moulding dry.
Nail the entire moulding, however. Nail through each miter and into the lid. The glue at the front will keep the miter tight. The nails at the unglued area at the back will allow the lid to move without things splitting or blowing apart. Well, that’s the plan at least. And it’s a good plan if you used Eastern white pine for this project. It moves little in service. If, however, you used flat-sawn red oak for your Schoolbox, then keep your fingers crossed.
Note: This is the last preview chapter I’ll be posting of the expanded edition of “The Anarchist’s Design Book.” The remainder of the new chapters will be released with the expanded edition at the end of 2019.
Up into my 30s, I wrote songs as much as I wrote newspaper or magazine stories, and I was always bewildered about where melody came from. How, after so many generations of births and deaths, could we still manufacture new melodies?
The answer is, of course, that we can’t.
Growing up in Arkansas in the 1970s, it was impossible to escape traditional music. You’d hear it at every church picnic, at the gas station and while eating at the Irish pub/barbecue restaurant. It was even piped into the town elevator.
Fingerpicking was like the fluoride in the water. Banjos hummed like the mosquitos in your ear.
I didn’t think much of it all until I encountered the alt.country band Uncle Tupelo in the 1990s. One of the bonus tracks on the CD “No Depression” was “John Hardy.” And the first time I heard the song I instantly began singing all the words.
John Hardy was a desperate little man He carried two guns every day He shot a man down on the West Virginia line They saw John Hardy getting away
It was the closest thing I’ve ever had to a repressed memory bubbling to the surface. I grabbed the CD case and saw the song was credited to Lead Belly. That was weird. It wasn’t a Lead Belly song I’d ever heard. After some digging, I found the source of where I’d learned the song: the Carter Family.
Then, like every aspiring songwriter, I soon found that the Carter Family was the source code for an astonishing mountain of American rock, folk, pop, blues and bluegrass. That statement sounds like hyperbole, but it’s not.
True story: While on tour with her husband, Johnny Cash, June Carter once demonstrated this deep truth by switching on the radio in their tour bus. About every third song, June began singing the Carter Family version over the version playing through the radio. Different lyrics. Different instrumentation. Same song.
This small songwriting revelation (which nearly every American songwriter has) turned out to be as important to my furniture making as it was to my love of music. And so, if you’ll indulge me a bit, learning a little about Sara, Maybelle and A.P. Carter can help you understand vernacular furniture and how to design it.
Bristol, 1927
Many musical historians and musicians peg the beginning of country music to a series of recording sessions in Bristol, Tenn., in the summer of 1927. Ralph Peer of the Victor Talking Machine Co. toured through several Southern cities equipped with new recording technology and a desire to capture examples of “old time” or hillbilly music.
He attracted local artists with newspaper advertisements and the opportunity to get paid for their work. While in Bristol (a town that bleeds over into Virginia), he snared his biggest catch, the Carter Family. Led by A.P. Carter, the group was comprised of three people named Carter: A.P., who arranged the songs and occasionally sang; his wife, Sara, who played autoharp and had an enchanting and powerful voice; and Maybelle, who played guitar (plus other instruments), sang and was Sara’s cousin.
The Carter Family recorded six songs with Peer over two days during that first recording session. The three were paid and they returned to their Virginia homes. After the royalty checks began coming in, A.P. sought to record more songs (the Carter Family eventually recorded more than 250 songs, according to the documentary “The Winding Stream”). And this is where things get interesting.
The songs that the Carter Family brought to record were a combination of traditional tunes, original songs the three had written, plus songs that A.P. had “collected” and then adapted – changing the words, adding a beat here or there, tidying it up.
So that’s why you’ll see a song such as “John Hardy” attributed to three or four (or a dozen) people. These were songs that were transmitted from person to person and that changed based on who was singing them, when and where. The songs didn’t belong to one person. They belonged to the whole culture.
These melodies are deeply embedded into the American psyche – especially among Southerners – and it can be shocking (and sometimes uncomfortable) to have the curtain pulled away.
Listen to the Carter Family song “Wayworn Traveler,” sometimes titled “Palms of Victory.” (You can find it on the contemporary album “Carter Family: Storms are on the Ocean.”) The song is commonly regarded as a hymn attributed to a New York reverend from 1836.
Bob Dylan rewrote the song as “Paths of Victory” in the early 1960s. Then he rewrote it again as “The Times They Are a Changin’.”
In my mind, there is nothing wrong or shameful about this process of evolution. Each artist adds or subtracts something from the original to suit the time or place. And the work rises or falls based on the talent of the writer or singer.
By the end of his life, A.P. Carter had traveled thousands of miles all over the South to collect the songs that he, Sara and Maybelle would then hone, record and perform. Their true genius was in acting as one of the most incredible funnels and filters of American song culture. (Also, Maybelle Carter happened to invent the concept of lead guitar with her “Carter scratch” style of playing. She was a pioneering bad-ass.)
For me, this way of looking at traditional music has profound implications when applied to vernacular furniture.
The Vernacular Pattern
As I mentioned at the beginning of this book, the high furniture styles tend to be transmitted via pattern books – basically big catalogs of ornate or expensive works that are connected to a big name such as Chippendale, Hepplewhite, Stickley or Maloof. That’s why we have schools of furniture that are connected to famous names. And, as a bonus, there’s a book to consult that lays out the boundaries of the style. Chippendale has its somewhat Chinese details and distinctive feet. Stickley has a particular joint and a particular material (quartersawn white oak). Maloof has a language of curves and joinery that is easily understood.
Higher-style music is similar. We have the works of Mozart, Bach, Brahms and the Beatles to endlessly parse and parley. There is (usually) a definitive body of work. And it’s fairly straightforward to say when a particular piece of work is either inside or outside of a particular style.
Vernacular music and furniture do not work that way. There is no “Book of Cletus” when it comes to backstools. No detailed drawings to tell us if a certain detail is proper or inadmissible. So the only thing we can do is study the furniture record, which mutates across time and state lines and is always incomplete. We’ll never see it all.
But if you see enough of it, then the form’s design elements become like a melody you’ve heard your entire life. You know what details and proportions create harmony. And what’s a wrong note. If you sing it enough times you probably will change the pitch to suit your vocal range. Or change a curve to better suit your spokeshave and skills. And when you encounter a new version of the form that you’ve never seen before, it can cause you to shift your work again in response.
The boundaries of what’s acceptable and what’s not are softer and more nebulous. But they are there.
Again, I like to think of vernacular furniture design as a shared melody. If your work is appealing, then others will sing along. In their hands and on their lips, your melody will endure and change over time. If, on the other hand, your work fails to resonate with others, then it dies alone at the curb, never to be sung again.
What Does This Mean to a Designer?
If you want to build in vernacular styles, I think you need to explore the forms for yourself. Building pieces from this book or other books on vernacular furniture is a start. But it’s like singing songs from a Pete Seeger songbook that you bought at the mall. That might be where it starts, but that’s definitely not how it ends.
Like A.P. Carter, you need to get in your car and drive to the next town to see what is happening there. And then adapt what you find to your needs.
As I build these forms over and over they change. You might not notice it from one chair to another, but every piece is a little different. Sometimes it’s because the material demands it. Right now I’m building a series of four armchairs in white oak, and the seat material is thicker than usual. I could spend some extra time planing it down, or I could slightly increase the thickness of the legs to look harmonious with the seat. Or increase the bevel on the seat to look harmonious with thinner legs. Either change might push my next set of chairs in that direction.
John Brown, the famous Welsh chairmaker, noted this sort of evolution in his columns for Good Woodworking magazine. After making seats using thick material for years, he was once backed into a situation where he had to use some thinner stock for the seat. It became a turning point for his work, and his chairs became lighter from that day forward. But they still looked unquestionably like Welsh stick chairs.
The change might be due to a mistake. The rake and splay of the front legs of my chairs changed when one day I set my bevel gauge to the wrong resultant angle – a full 6° off. But the result was pleasing, so that’s now the angle I use every day.
Other times, changes come because I’ve seen a beautiful old piece or a new piece by a fellow woodworker I admire. There might be something about it – a curve, an angle, an overall pose – that pushes my work in a different direction. I might not even realize I’m absorbing it at first.
And when I feel guilty for it, I again remember A.P. Carter. Collecting those songs preserved them from extinction and ensured their place in our nation’s memory. Likewise, the only way to ensure vernacular furniture survives against the onslaught of manufactured flat-pack pieces is to build the stuff again and again. To allow it to change with the needs of the maker and the tools and materials at hand.
I also think it’s healthy to reject dogma and allow techniques to change as well. Like when Dylan went electric at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965.
Vernacular stuff doesn’t have to be built out of riven green wood (just like folk music doesn’t require an acoustic guitar). It can be built out of what you have on hand. If that’s riven green wood, use that. If it’s poplar and oak from the home center, use that. The same goes for tools. Vernacular furniture generally requires a smaller tool kit than the high-style stuff, but almost anything can be in that kit. My first piece was built using a jigsaw, drill and block plane. Nothing more. Use what you got. Today I use a band saw, bench planes and lots of other tools. And the tool kit neither diminishes nor improves my work.
There are fewer limits than you think.
In fact, many times we think of “tradition” as a thing that reduces the scope of our work. I would argue that idea is false. Traditional music and traditional furniture – when disconnected from the high styles – offer immense freedom for you as a maker and a composer.
There is a vast supply of forms and melodies all around you, ready to be collected, changed, rebuilt and adored. Look for them and listen. They are the mundane objects that escape attention – the background music stitched into your heart.
One of the great advantages of working with riven material is that the grain direction of your boards becomes much less of a problem. With most riven pieces (that aren’t radically tapered), you can cut both ways on the piece with zero tear-out because the grain is dead straight.
I call this the “American Advantage” – this continent still has the big, straight trees that allow parts to be riven for chairs and even casework. And not only does the raw material affect the process, it also affects the tools. When you have dead-straight material, you can shave all your parts with a drawknife or a bevel-up spokeshave.
So what happens when you step out of the American chair tradition?
The process and the tools change. When I build American Welsh Stick Chairs I don’t use riven material – I use whatever I can find that is naturally twisted or straight to suit the chair parts I have in my mind. This stuff can be from the lumberyard – or your backyard hedge. It’s perfectly suitable material for a chair, but it doesn’t like a drawknife or a bevel-up spokeshave. And that’s because grain direction is a big problem when you use sawn or found material.
Personally, I fall back on cabinetmaking tools and techniques to deal with grain direction on my chair parts. When I use my bench planes for a finishing cut, I set the cap iron (aka chipbreaker or back iron) so it is only a hair away from the cutting edge. And I mean a hair – maybe .006”. That allows me to deal with arms, seats, legs and doublers that have gnarly grain.
When I use a block plane, that means I need to set the mouth so it’s as fine as possible. For me, that means setting it so that the shaving gets wedged between the mouth and iron. And the next shaving pushes it out. That is tight.
Using these techniques – a close-set breaker or a fine mouth – allow me to plane my parts without thinking about grain direction as much, if at all. So I can taper all my legs by planing from the foot to the tenon; I don’t have to every turn the leg around to plane the other way.
Yes, it takes some practice to get the breaker and the mouth in the right spot. But it’s no more work than learning to sharpen or wield a drawknife. It’s just a different approach.
