You may have noticed that Chris and I have been making a lot of chairs recently. In the past few months, we’ve made a few incremental improvements and changes to our processes that make charmaking easier, more accurate and more enjoyable.
But now, we think we’ve come up with a tool that will revolutionize your chairmaking process – and rather than just write it up, the millennial-in-residence (that’s me) decided to make a flashy video to share our innovation with you.
So, please enjoy the video below about our latest innovation, the “Chairmaker’s Sighting Square” – and scroll past the video for the necessary files to make your own.
“Shaker Inspiration” is at the printer, and is on track to ship in mid to late November.
Until the harcover book ships, all customers who purchase the book get free pdf download of the entire book at checkout. The pdf is hi-resolution and searchable – handy for taking along on a trip or for searching.
Also, like all Lost Art Press digital products, it is offered without DRM (digital rights management), so you can easily integrate it into your personal library without passwords or having to be connected to the internet when you read it.
As of now, the hardcover book and pdf cost $43. When the book ships, the price for the book plus the pdf will be $53.75.
For those who might be unsure if this book is their cup of tea/La Croix/bourbon, here’s a high-resolution excerpt of various sections of the book. It’s short, but will give you a taste of what this book is about: how-to, design, the business of woodworking, inspiration and measured drawings. Click the link below, and the download will begin:
I am pleased (very nearly thrilled) to announce that the next round of our Chore Coats will be made by Sew Valley, a small Cincinnati company that seeks to bring manufacturing (and its skills) back to the Midwest.
We found Sew Valley in a funny way. My wife, Lucy May, wrote a story about them for WCPO-TV in May 2018 and told me all about her visit there. At the time I was interested because Sew Valley was co-founded by Rosie Kovacs, who also founded the Brush Factory, a design/build furniture shop in Cincinnati. I’ve been a big fan of her work for some time.
Then our manufacturing facility for Chore Coats flaked on us this summer. So Tom Bonamici and I began searching for a new facility to make our coats. I found one in Tennessee. Then Tom called me and said: “Have you ever heard of Rosie Kovacs?”
Within a week I toured Sew Valley’s facility on Cincinnati’s West End, which is on the ground floor of the National Flag Co. It’s an old facility. The huge Sew Valley space is filled with restored vintage sewing machinery. And I got to meet Rosie in person for the first time.
I think it’s a perfect fit. Sew Valley is dedicated to reviving nearly lost production sewing skills. They do excellent work. And Rosie is a force of nature here in Cincinnati.
Right now we’re moving all our patterns, materials and buttons (how is it we own thousands of buttons?) to Sew Valley this week so they can begin production within the next couple weeks. If all goes well, we should open pre-production ordering in a week or so. And – I saved the best part for last – I think we are going to be able to keep the price the same as on our previous runs of chore coats.
When production cranks up, we’ll shoot some photos and video. In the meantime, here’s an Instagram post of them working on our chore coat sample.
Instead of reveling in my dotage, today I assembled this staked stool.
I’ll be doing a demonstration of staked joinery at 3 p.m. this Saturday at the DesignBuildCincy show at Music Hall. So if you’d like to see me build a stool in an hour (or less) please stop by.
The DesignBuildCincy show is an interesting affair, bringing together furniture makers, home remodelers, architects, artists and suppliers in a show for customers who appreciate craftsmanship and good design. (Here’s a list of vendors.)
I was asked to exhibit my work at the show, but I simply don’t have enough furniture in stock to manage a booth. So instead, they asked if I would give a short talk.
The show is located in the beautiful and newly restored Music Hall in Over the Rhine. I have been aching to see the completed work, which sought to restore many of the details of the hall when it was constructed in 1878. Plus, if you know anything about Over the Rhine, it’s a great place to get a meal or just stroll around the historic buildings.
Hope to see you there. Hope to see someone there – there’s nothing sadder than making a stool for an audience of none.
On our way to the lumberyard this morning, Brendan and I stopped at the local IKEA to check out an interesting joint used on some of IKEA’s more expensive tables. Also, Brendan likes the meatballs there.
The joint is used on the company’s Lisabo tables and is a prime example of how CNC can be used to improve the craft. Instead of using a CNC to cut an ancient joint, the designers created an entirely new knockdown joint. It’s a self-wedging tapered tenon that locks with a single screw.
Check out the video here. More fascinating details are here at Core77. Here’s IKEA’s nice video on the joint the company calls the “wedge dowel.”
We were both impressed by the joint’s rigidity and simplicity. Still, I wasn’t there to buy an IKEA table. We also checked out several of IKEA’s other semi-staked designs. One used a threaded tenon to attach the leg – nice but the lack of rake and splay killed the look.
We also checked out a table with a flying saucer design. The legs use machine screws and a threaded plate to attach them to the top. Very clever, but it is inherently a weak design as the machine screw is embedded in end grain. These tables are $30 and are not expected to last long.
There also was a fascinating staked sitting bench that used a clever way to introduce rake and splay to the bench. The rake was drilled into the cross battens. The splay was introduced by insetting the batten at an angle. Again, a great application of CNC.
The bench was pretty comfortable. Not comfortable enough to purchase, however.
IKEA scored only two sales from us today. First was the meatballs with gravy (yum, gray food), which Brendan snarfed down in a few minutes.
The second purchase was a couple sheepskins for my Welsh chairs. While in Wales, I noticed that John Brown’s extended family used sheepskins on their chairs to add comfort and warmth. These skins were a shocking $29.99. I bought two and we tried them out at dinner tonight (which was also not meatballs).
My daughter Katy reports: “They make me feel like royalty.”