Lost Art Press

Storefront Takeover This Saturday (June 9)

Posted on by fitz
00200003
Not our storefront – yet. Photo by Gordon Baer.

Normally around this time every month Chris writes a blog post to tell you that the Lost Art Press storefront in Covington, Ky., will be open on the coming Saturday. But with Chris visiting his (kind of) ancestral homeland, it’s up to me to announce and host the storefront’s open house.

And so, we’re going to do things a bit differently this weekend. Of course, the storefront (at 837 Willard St. in Covington, Ky.) will be open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday (June 9). But this week, I’ll be setting the shop up for a particular set of activities: whittlin’, chire mekin’ an crown craftin’.

Yes – this weekend, in keeping with the recent research Chris and I have been doing on Chester Cornett, I’ll be setting up the shop for a number of Appalachian craft activities.

  • I’ll have three shavehorses out front for making posts and rungs for chairs. I’ll be attempting to encourage (coerce?) people to join me in making simple shaved parts – the rocker I’m hoping to recreate has quite a few.
  • I’ll have tools and green wood for some good old fashioned whittling and (Kentucky-style) slöjd – at last month’s Appalachian festival here in Cincinnati I picked up an old book full of different woodcraft projects from the mountains from which I’m pulling a few fun-looking projects.
  • We’ll be playing the movie “Hand Carved” all day in the front room, which is an incredible documentary film made by Appalshop on Chester Cornett, following him through the process of making one chair.
  • We’ll also be making some paper crowns in the style of the Craftsman King of the Cumberlands.

Also, “Cut & Dried” has arrived at the storefront and will be available for purchase and perusal. I’ve been reading through it over the past few days, and I’m loving it.

If you’re looking for more to do in the area this weekend:

  • We’ve said it a few times, but the Kentucky Folk Art Center is less than two hours away from the shop in Morehead, Ky., and with its funding in jeopardy, it may be closing its doors in the next few months. It is well worth the trip, and there are three chairs by Cornett on display currently.
  • Chako Bakery Cafe is only two blocks from the shop, and by around 9:30 a.m. on the weekend there is an incredible array of Japanese baked goods, savory and sweet, that bring in Japanese expats from hours away.
  • The Terracotta Army exhibit at the Cincinnati Museum of Art opened a few weeks ago, and is a breathtaking survey of the life and legacy of China’s first emperor.
  • The Swing House at the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati looks amazing – suspend yourself from a three-story tall swing in a beautiful space. Both the CAC and CMA museums have free admission, with special exhibits costing only a small special fee.

See you this weekend!

— Brendan Gaffney

Get a job.

Posted on by fitz
Cambridge Union Society card
Prior to my most valuable education.

Every so often someone contacts me to ask for advice about quitting a day job and going into furniture making as a full-time endeavor. They’ve taken some classes and built some pieces — sometimes eye-poppingly impressive ones — on their own time. Some have had paid commissions and amassed a months’-long backlog for more paid work that leads them to think it’s time to take the plunge. Inundated by images of other woodworkers on social media — usually without any indication as to which ones are making furniture for a living, as distinct from in their spare time, or those who work at it full-time with support from a well-employed partner* — the people who contact me with this deeply existential inquiry seem to feel they’re missing out on the #selfemployedandlovingit lifestyle.

I invariably ask about their circumstances. Do they live alone? Have a family to support? Is there a partner with a regular source of income and benefits such as health insurance (which, depending on your age and other factors, can easily cost more per month than a mortgage)? I also point out that the good times can’t be relied upon to last; when your household income depends entirely on making furniture — a product that most people consider desirable, rather than necessary — economic downturns can be devastating.**

But self-employment is not the only option. In the past month I’ve heard from three furniture makers who are looking to hire.

Running my own furniture business was my dream, too, when I completed the basic City & Guilds furniture training in 1980. Luckily for me, I was disabused of that dream by my first woodworking employer, Roy Griffiths, who paid me to learn what full-time professional woodworking might mean. (I say “might mean” by way of acknowledging that every woodworker’s situation is different.) I followed that experience with work in another English workshop, then came back to the States and learned a whole new set of techniques and lessons about the business side of furniture making at Wall-Goldfinger in the late 1980s. To be clear, at no time during those years did I view myself as jumping from one employer to another in order to learn; I’m portraying my employment experiences in terms of learning here because I now have a sense of the invaluable education I obtained by working for others.

If you’re contemplating going pro, consider the traditional route — that of working for an established woodworking business. You will learn a ton of new techniques (trust me; every shop I’ve worked in has done things differently) in addition to gaining insight into what making furniture or cabinets on a daily basis really entails. You will also learn about the business of woodworking in the most real-world way. And you will be paid for this learning!

— Nancy Hiller, author of Making Things Work

*Save your outraged comments. I mean no disparagement to anyone. I’m simply pointing out that curated images on social media lead to inferences that in many cases do not match the underlying reality.

**Stay tuned for my interview with Aimé Ontario Fraser, who speaks poignantly about her own experience during the Great Recession. Also check out Paul Downs’s book, which is an excellent read.

Editing ‘The Intelligent Hand’

Posted on by Lost Art Press

DeskSwoopPaperTrays

I’m in Austria this week with my family. And while they sleep – Lucy is curled up beside me now – I can’t help but continue editing, sketching and writing.

Right now I’m near the end of editing David Savage’s “The Intelligent Hand.” It’s a most unusual book that will cause much gnashing of teeth and stirring of the trolls beneath the bridge (don’t let them snatch your Cheetos). I think you’ll love it.

At first, however, Megan Fitzpatrick wasn’t so sure.

She gave it a first edit two months ago and said to me several times: You’re not going to like what he says about workbenches. Or sharpening. Or tool steel. Or tools….

The truth is, I adore the book, and I especially love publishing books that don’t fit neatly my view of the craft or benches or tools. In fact, as an editor I consider it a joy and a duty – a noblesse oblige – to seek out perspectives different than mine. To promote them and give them time in the sun.

This approach is not intended to confuse you. It is, instead, an effort to illustrate that we are all myopic, no matter how open-minded we think we are. It’s easy (and perhaps comforting) to surround ourselves with people who see the world similarly. And ignore other perspectives.

But when we do this, it’s a hell of a lot harder to grow as a builder. Or as a person.

If you can look at David Savage’s designs and his 40-plus years of work and say he’s full of crap, then you need to take a critical look at yourself in the mirror. I have no lack of confidence in the way I feel about how I approach the craft. Neither does David, John Brown, Mary May, Don Williams, Peter Galbert, Andre Roubo or any of our authors.

If you let their ideas in, and if you try to see the world from their perspective, then hell, you might learn something.

— Christopher Schwarz

P.S. “The Intelligent Hand” is scheduled for a September 2018 release.

‘Cut & Dried’ has Shipped

Posted on by Kara Uhl

54957453659--BD862462-8B67-4B65-B7F4-D41B48E21A29.fullsizerender

I finally “met” Richard Jones. Richard and I have been emailing each other, at times daily, since we began turning his opus on timber technology into book form 11 months ago. Richard lives in Leeds, a city in West Yorkshire, England. I live 3,800 miles away, in Fort Thomas, KY. And last week, we spoke via Skype.

I needed to interview Richard for an author profile, and instead of chatting on the phone Richard suggested we Skype. While I would have preferred working through Richard’s life history while drinking a beer or two with him at his favorite pub, today’s technology did allow us to see each other as we spoke, despite the distance.

We talked about how he was born in Shropshire, on the Welsh border in the West Midlands of England, and grew up on a farm. We talked about how he was one of the few students who, in the early 1980s, applied and was accepted in the City & Guilds program in furniture making at Shrewsbury College of Arts and Technology, and how every Friday Robert Wearing would come in to teach – always with jigs. We talked about his work as a joiner and a furniture maker and a business owner and his time living in the U.S. and how it compares to living in the U.K., and his passion for rugby – both watching and playing. We talked for a long time and during that time I just kept thinking how lucky we are to have Richard in our circle of authors.

Richard is one of those rare individuals whose life has led him down varied paths and he’s managed – through hard work and talent – to excel in all of them. In a way, “Cut & Dried” reminds me of a roundabout, its contents sitting in the middle circle with Richard’s various roads leading to it. His approach to the technical and sometimes tedious world of timber technology allows for an accessible read, offering the basics, if that’s what you want, and the nitty gritty, if that’s what you want. And that accessibility stems from his life experiences, as a joiner, furniture maker, business owner, researcher, teacher and writer.

Today, Brendan Gaffney called me to say that the books had arrived at the storefront. I immediately drove over – with one of my children – to see it myself. I feel a bit guilty about this – Richard’s books are on their way to him, but one can’t Skype deliveries. Hopefully he’ll hold his life’s work soon.

It’s gorgeous.

IMG-7642

While admiring the dust jacket Brendan told me to look underneath – I ran my hand across the heavy hardcover boards wrapped in grey cotton cloth, stamped with a die from a hand-printed woodcut. And I thought, “I can’t wait for Richard to see this.”

FullSizeRender

The book is now shipping, so to everyone who has already purchased their copy (thank you), it’s on its way. I’m certain it will be well-loved on many bookshelves and in many shops. For while Richard easily incorporates stories throughout to make the reading enjoyable, it’s also a reference book, one you’ll reach for again and again, thankful for an author who dedicated 10 years of his life to making a topic so complex less so.

— Kara Gebhart Uhl

Wood Strength and Structures

Posted on by meghanlostartpress
Cut_and_dried_consumer3
Figure 14.1. Subject a post to enough stress and the long fibres will crumple and bend over as illustrated in figure 14.2. The failure in the photographed example came from the pressure applied to the end of a steam-bent oak strip restrained by the end stops of a bending strap.


This is an excerpt from “Cut & Dried” by Richard Jones. 

A tree’s form, looked at as if it was an engineered structure, consists of a column and cantilevered beams. The trunk is a column and the branches represent beams. The wood forming the structure of a tree, from root tips to the leaves, must simultaneously withstand vertical and horizontal loads, as well as twisting, flexing and shearing stresses. The trunk, for example, is anchored to the ground by the roots and carries a vertical load but it also experiences twisting and bending as the crown moves in the wind; the trunk itself is therefore a column cantilevered from the ground. The branches, cantilevered from the trunk and similarly cantilevered from each other, have to carry the weight of the leaves, withstand gravity and cope with wind-induced side-to-side movement and other forms of bending and flexing. The strength and mechanical characteristics of wood developed as a means to support the living tree, not as a material for the use of mankind; it is fortuitous for man that trees evolved into such useful material that we have been able to take advantage of for millennia.

To cope with the mechanical stresses life throws at them, trees have developed wood as their supporting structure. Wood is anisotropic because it has inconsistent properties in different directions. Essentially this means the inconsistencies exist longitudinally, radially and transversely within a branch or log. Secondly, wood is heterogeneous, meaning its composition varies. It’s easy to see these anisotropic and heterogeneous characteristics of wood because of the obvious irregularity visible in the grain structure. Steel and plastic, on the other hand, are homogenous and isotropic materials, being uniform in composition with equal properties in all directions. Some engineers of my acquaintance take issue with this and insist sheet steel, for example, has a “grain.” This suggests it is perhaps measurably stronger in one direction than another, and bends more easily one way than another. I cannot verify this claim independently but I am inclined to believe the word of those who work the material on a regular basis.

Frequently-tested Strength Properties
The mechanical properties of wood indicate its strength properties. Testing of these properties takes place in both hardwoods and softwoods. The terminology used to describe the mechanical properties of wood identifies the applied stress, e.g., compression, tension, torsion (twisting) and shear and, secondly, the orientation of the stress to the wood’s grain direction. Briefly, the descriptions are as follows:

Cut_and_dried_consumer2
Figure 14.46. Architectural post-and-beam construction. Wooden post-and-beam construction supports a deck above boathouses. The deck is a dining area for the attached restaurant.

Compression Parallel to the Grain – This stress shortens the fibres lengthways, e.g., the weight of a building compresses the stilts (posts) of certain types of beach houses or boathouses, or the legs of chairs. A slim post can support a lot of downward pressure (weight) if there is a method found to prevent the post from either buckling or falling over, e.g., pedestal chairs with a supporting bracket-like foot.

Cut_and_dried_consumer4
Figure 14.2.


Compression Perpendicular to the Grain – An example of this is a loaded shelf that sags unless the shelf has additional structural support. A shelf under compression (loaded on the top face) leads to tension (stretching of the grain) on the bottom face. Some woods are more elastic than others. Ash is comparatively elastic and will recover better than pine. The elasticity of ash is one reason for its suitability for hammer and axe shafts, and baseball bats.

Cut_and_dried_consumer5
Figure 14.3. A wedge, such as an axe used to split firewood, illustrates tension force applied perpendicular to the grain.


Tension Perpendicular to the Grain – Cleaving or riving illustrates this form of stress (see figure 14.3), and is used to advantage in traditional country wood crafts, for example, those associated with coppicing such as fence and hurdle making and basket weaving. Riving or cleaving oak radially to create workable pieces of timber has a long tradition. Driving nails into wood applies the same stress, and some wood species require pre-boring prior to nailing to prevent splitting, whereas others generally don’t require pre-boring. Those species benefitting from pre-boring tend to be even grained but hard to very hard such as maple, or have distinctly soft spring growth and hard summer growth, such as some softwoods including Douglas fir, and ring-porous hardwoods such as ash and oak.

— MB