I’m always on the lookout for local materials I can use to build stick chairs. Elm is my favorite wood, but it can be difficult to find for purchase.
Last month Shea Alexander of Alexander Bros. gave me a couple boards of honey locust to try out for a chair seat. It looks a lot like elm, with green undertones and slightly shimmering grain.
After surfacing it, I took a chunk and rived it out to see how it split. Unfortunately, it splits easily and cleanly. So it’s still OK for a chair seat (if I’m careful), but not as ideal as elm.
In the video above, I rive out some honey locust, white oak and American elm to show the differences.
Thanks for the wood, Shea. It really is beautiful and interesting stuff.
Typically, I’m not a fan of Print on Demand (POD) publishers who take low-quality scans of books in the public domain and sell them alongside antique books. I have been fooled a couple times and ordered a POD book by accident.
But here is one exception. The Forgotten Books website in the UK is a massive collection of public domain works that are well-indexed. There I have found about a dozen woodworking books I had never heard of thanks to the site.
There are school manuals for woodworking, William Fairham’s “Woodwork Joints” and more than 100 others.
If you really want to buy one of these books, go ahead. I can offer no promises on the print quality. However, you can preview each title as a guest, and you get to see quite a lot of the interior of the book. More than enough to decide if it’s a book you are willing to chase down on the secondhand market, or perhaps find through archive.org or one of the many other sites that archive scans.
It’s a big list. I think you’ll enjoy paging through it.
Among the classes on sale at 10 a.m. is Chris Williams’ Welsh Stick Chair Class – we’ll have to dig out our Y Ddraig Goch.
The following Covington Mechanicals classes go on sale today at 10 a.m. Eastern. They will likely sell out quickly – some in seconds – so be ready to register. (But before you do, please check your calendar to make sure you can attend the class for which you want to register).
If you don’t get into your desired class, do sign up for the waitlist – because I can’t remember a class in which we didn’t have to fill at least one slot.
Some righteous fried chicken from Libby’s, a Covington staple.
We are thrilled to host Lie-Nielsen Toolworks this weekend for a Hand Tool Event at our storefront at 837 Willard St. in Covington, Ky. (Details here.)
If this is your first trip to Covington, or you haven’t been here since the pandemic, there is a lot to chat about.
During the last five years, the city has blossomed in many ways (not our doing), and there are somehow even more places to eat and drink within a 5-minute walk of our front door. Here is an updated list of places close by that we recommend and love.
Breakfast
The Anchor Grill: Cash-only diner that is open 24 hours. No yuppies or hipsters. Pike Street diner: Upscale diner for fancier lads and lasses. Cedar: Still fancier breakfast spot for brunchers. Coppin’s: The fanciest breakfast. It’s at the Hotel Covington. Dang good. (Also great for lunch and dinner.) North South Baking: Great pastries, breakfast sandwiches and coffee. Point Perk Coffee: All manner of coffee. Left Bank Coffee: Also good coffee.
Lunch Olla: Best Mexican food in town. (Also great for dinner.) Guiterrez: Mexican deli run by the same family that runs Olla. Empanada’s Box: Fantastic selection of delicious empanadas. Gyros on Main: Just like it says. Kung Food: Good Chinese with good beer. (Also good for dinner.) Thai Pavilion: Good Thai with decent beer. The Standard: Burgers and fries in a converted gas station. Kealoha: Healthy and delicious Hawaiian food. Lorenzo’s: Good sandwich spot.
Dinner Otto’s: Southern classics. Libby’s: Fried chicken and other Southern specialties. Frida 602: Very good gringo Mexican. Mama’s on Main: Sturdy Italian food. Larry’s: Our fave dive bar with tater-tot-based cuisine Dewey’s: Excellent pizza. You can get it at the stand-alone restaurant, or order it from inside Braxton Brewing, the city brewery. Juniper’s: Gin bar with a great rotating tapas menu. Zola’s: Straight-ahead, no-apologies bar food. Riverside Korean: A Covington staple for 20 years.
Drinks Crafts & Vines: Our local. Great people and good small bites, too. OKBB: Probably the best bourbon bar in the world. Vintage: A wild place that sells vintage bourbon. Braxton Brewing: Solid beer, with a great pizza place inside. Rooftop bar. Knowledge or Coppin’s: The multiple bars at the Hotel Covington are all excellent. Second Story Bar: Very nice bar above the Flying Axes bar on Sixth Street.
Fun Stuff Earth to Kentucky: Toy store on our street. Amazing selection of cartoon-based stuff. Hail Records and Oddities: If you need vinyl, weird taxidermy, occult stuff, stickers etc., go see Neil. Hierophany & Hedge: A city landmark and magic shop. Not to be missed.
And then there’s Cincinnati – a whole other world of good food and drink. It is no wonder that it’s difficult to stay thin here.
Olivia and I, checking out the marvelous construction of one of the interactive pages in “The Dream of the Joiner.”
Last summer, a mysterious package arrived for me in the mail. It was from Suzanne Ellison, whom you know better as Suzo, our indefatigable researcher, aka The Saucy Indexer. Inside was an incredible handmade book, written and illustrated by Suzo, “The Dream of the Joiner.” And it was furoshiki-wrapped (see below). Oh, that I had a quarter of Suzo’s imagination – and a scintilla of her amazing ability to construct pop-up books (for lack of a better descriptor for the interactivity…though “pop-up book” seems insufficient for this handmade delight.). Suzo is the best! And I meant to share this long before now. But today, it was quiet enough in the shop that I could record it.
I felt bad about opening this gorgeous package.
With apologies for my attempt at character voices (I fear I forgot which voice went with which character from time to time) I give you “The Dream of the Joiner” in a video reading (and do read the left-hand pages, with information about the illustrations – I did not include that text, because it’s not part of the narrative). The folding/moving/turning parts of this book are even more impressive in person, but I hope this will suffice.
Thank you again, Suzanne, for this amazing gift (which lives on a shelf well out of reach of the cats)!
