Lost Art Press

Follow up or forget it

Posted on by fitz

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5/20/2018 5:42 p.m.

Nancy,

I remember five years ago I asked if I could maybe help you out or simply watch in the workshop to see if I can’t learn a thing or two about carpentry. Although I ended up not being able to come in at the time, I’ve become more interested in the trade, and was wondering if there’s any chance I could learn something from you provided it doesn’t interfere with your work.

Best,

Jacob (not the writer’s real name)

5/21/2018 8:09 a.m.

Jacob,

I would be very happy to talk with you about your interest. I’m not in a position right now to give any instruction because my schedule is jammed. Simply watching me (or anyone else) work is not how you would learn this craft; it’s completely hands-on, a matter of training eyes and hands to work together, in addition to learning the principles behind joinery, how to use hand tools, and how to use machines. There is also much to learn about wood and other materials, such as adhesives and finishes. Aside from this, I don’t let people come and watch me work because it’s distracting; this translates to increasing the likelihood of errors, not to mention danger.

If you’d like to come to the shop and have a chat over coffee one day this week, let’s set up a time. I can make time on Tuesday or Friday. Let me know.

Nancy

5/22/2018 10:16 a.m.
Jacob,

Hello again. I’m writing out of avuncular concern (or whatever the feminine version of “avuncular” might be). Please understand that the following is not a reprimand, but advice from a friend of the family who has known you for many years and wants to see you succeed in whatever endeavors you undertake.

When you contact a businessperson to ask for what is essentially free advice or help, it’s important to respond to his or her reply in a timely manner. It doesn’t matter whether his or her answer is “sure, let’s do this” or along the lines of what I wrote yesterday morning. If you want to be seen as a responsible, considerate adult, you should acknowledge the reply promptly and respectfully. I don’t know what is going on with you this summer; I don’t know how you’re feeling about life in general, whether you’re excited (as you have much reason to be!) or anxious (which would also be understandable…). Your state of mind is immaterial to the importance of responding. This is the kind of situation where you must learn to act regardless of how you feel. (Trust me, it gets much easier with practice. I’ve had a LOT of practice.)

The other point I want to make is that you have expressed an interest in my line of work on two occasions, and I have offered what I could in response. The first time, a few years ago, I offered to start work an hour earlier each day, at 7, to give you an hour of free hands-on instruction. I have not made such an offer to anyone, though had [my stepson, who attended the same school as “Jacob”] been alive today and interested in learning about my line of work, I would have done so for him. People from around the country contact me for advice and help, and I don’t have the time to give it to them. Others pay to take classes with me in woodworking schools. I was offering you instruction at no charge. It was totally fine that you decided to spend that time with the [local theater group] instead. Selfishly, I was happy not to have to add another hour to my [shop part of the] workday. But to contact me again about your interest in my kind of work, then not respond promptly to my reply, makes you appear less than serious in your interest. Honestly, it looks bad. If I were a prospective employer, this lack of response would make me choose someone else instead. Who knows? Maybe you got some great offer in the past 24-odd hours that you decided to take, in which case, yay! But that still does not obviate the need to acknowledge my response to your note, or that of anyone else in a comparable situation.

Let me offer a snippet of my own experience in contrast. When I was 20 and living in a rural village in England I decided that I wanted to learn to build furniture. I signed up for a City & Guilds course at the local vocational college. I didn’t drive; I couldn’t afford a car, let alone driving lessons. I rode my bicycle in all weather. You lived in England for a year; you have some idea of how miserably chilly it can be. I got chilblains, a precursor to frostbite, on my fingers and toes. But I showed up every morning at 7:45 and did the work along with the other students, then spent the afternoons working on a cobbled-together worktable in the dining room of the house my boyfriend and I were renting, so that I could earn some money to pay bills. That yearlong course was just the beginning of my education in my field. You really don’t start to learn seriously until you go to work in someone else’s shop and get some experience of the economic realities in this (or any) line of business. This is just a tiny peek into what serious interest looks like. It requires dogged perseverance and existential investment. And it is essential to be courteous to everyone with whom you come into contact, whether or not he or she is able to provide the kind of help you would like.

Again, this is emphatically *not* intended to criticize or reprimand you. I am writing in the spirit of helpfulness as someone who knows the ropes in her line of work, and as I said above, wants to see you flourish.

With the feminine version of avuncular affection,

Nancy–Author of Making Things Work

Day 1: Chris Williams’s Welsh Stick Chair Class

Posted on by Lost Art Press

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Today I’m going to tell you a nice story. Later in the week I’ll tell you a shocking one.

For the last couple weeks I’ve been unusually chipper, despite all the crap I’ve been managing with my father’s estate. In fact, the other day, my spouse, Lucy, looked at me a bit odd as I was making coffee at 6 a.m. with a s&*t-eating grin on my face.

“You OK?” she asked.

Being somewhat self-aware I answered. “Yes. This coming week is the closest I’ll ever get to taking a class with John Brown.”

Welshman John Brown died 10 years ago after changing the lives of thousands of woodworkers with his book “Welsh Stick Chairs” and his columns in Good Woodworking magazine. The chair he showed in his magazine articles inspired me to seek out chairmaking classes and to dive deep into the historical record of vernacular furniture.

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At some point, Chris Williams sent me an email about his work with John Brown, which began in the mid 1990s and ended with John Brown’s death in 2008. After hundreds of emails across the Atlantic, I resolved to bring Chris here to teach Americans how Chris builds a Welsh stick chair. It’s different than John Brown’s, and that’s part of the shocking story coming later this week.

We’re calling this chair the Williams Welsh Chair (#williamswelshchair), and it’s unlike anything most American eyes have seen.

Today we glued up the arm bow and saddled the seat for this chair. I’ve worked with a lot of chairmakers in the last 25 years, and I can honestly say that the way Chris approaches his chairs is unique and definitely worth listening to.

And that’s the point of Chris’s upcoming book, tentatively titled “The Life & Work of John Brown.” While today was overwhelming (and the next four days will only get worse), I managed to snap these photos of the construction process. I hope you enjoy them.

— Christopher Schwarz

 

 

Union: The Lost Shaker Village

Posted on by Lost Art Press

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The two closest Shaker communities to Cincinnati are also the most difficult to see.

The White Water Shaker Village isn’t open to the public on a regular basis, though there is a dedicated group of people trying to change that. And Union Village – the largest Western Shaker community – has all but been erased.

marble_0_0The only structure that remains (that I know of) is now the marketing office for the Otterbein Senior Life retirement home (see photo at right).

Union Village, about 30 miles northeast of Cincinnati, was once a bustling area of commerce. The Shakers there sold seeds and brooms and were an important part of the abolitionist activity in the area before the Civil War.

While the village is gone, some of its furniture was saved.

On Saturday, I took Welsh chairmaker Chris Williams and Megan Fitzpatrick to Harmon Museum in Lebanon, Ohio. This charming and tidy museum doesn’t attract lots of tourists, but it has an impressive collection of Shaker furniture and objects that were rescued from Union Village.

Many of the pieces display the characteristics of typical Ohio-made pieces, including the table legs that are turned and taper at the floor. Some of the chairs and rockers in the collection were downright astonishing, and I wonder where they were made. And there were some impressive casework pieces, including secretaries and built-ins.

If you find yourself in the area, I recommend a stop. It’s a few minutes off Interstate 71. In the meantime, here are some photos of a few of the pieces that caught my eye.

— Christopher Schwarz

 

The Dark Side

Posted on by meghanlostartpress
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Fig. 13-1. Other ways of working. Some users begin their mouldings with a round plane on a chamfer or a hollow on an arris.


This is an excerpt from “Mouldings in Practice” by Matthew Sheldon Bickford. 

I have spoken to scores of people regarding the methods of making profiles with hollows and rounds that I have covered thus far. While most new users find the techniques extremely simple and thorough, some more experienced woodworkers find it too calculated. In many  ways I agree with this sentiment, particularly as you improve in your skills. In this chapter I will address a few of the techniques that many other woodworkers employ.

Many users much more accomplished than myself start the hollow on the single arris of a single rabbet rather than on the dual arrises of a chamfer. Similarly, for concave curves they start a round on a chamfer rather than the arrises defining a rabbet.

With these techniques, it is recommended that the user start the profile toward the end of the board, near where a pass with the plane  is generally ended, and work his way back in abbreviated steps. The first pass with the round, using your fingers as a fence (I use my fingers on both sides here), will start the profile in the last 6″ of the  board. With the second pass, back the plane up another 6″ and take another pass all the way to the end of the board. Proceeding in this way will create a profile that is ramped toward the end of the piece. To  correct this, once the plane is tracking properly the user should begin to take passes abbreviated in the opposite direction – feathering the plane off the profile before the end – thereby evening the profile across  its length. The toe of the plane will ultimately guide the cutting edge and the heel.

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Fig. 13-2. Less work? If you start a round on a chamfer there is less material to remove, but also more steering of the tool.

The advantage of working in this manner, from end to beginning, is that the plane creates its own chutes in which to fall. The first pass may be imperfect. The second pass, using the plane’s length and the chute that was started with the previous pass, will be slightly more accurate and uniform, especially toward the end. With each subsequent pass the profile will develop further and more uniformly. Accuracy here depends upon skill with steering the hollow and round, not on a square rabbet.

The advantage of this method in using a round is that there is less stock to remove in profiles of 60° as shown in Fig. 13-2.

There is, of course, much more stock to remove with a hollow using this method as shown in Fig. 13-3. There is, I guess, also one less step.

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Fig. 13-3. More wear on the tool. Using a hollow on an arris will wear the sole and iron more in the middle of the tool.

The disadvantage of this traditional method of using hollows and rounds is in its inaccuracy for beginners. It is much easier for the new moulding plane user to achieve consistency when the plane has two points upon which to ride. However, I have introduced this technique here because there are times in which it is useful, even necessary.

For example, I use this method exclusively when working with No. 2 planes. You will notice that I never illustrate knocking the corners off the square facet before creating a bead, as shown in Fig. 13-4. Working a rabbet plane into that tight area is dangerous in regard to the surrounding profiles, especially given that the adjoining surfaces are complete at that stage.

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Fig. 13-4. Useful with small planes. Working right on an arris is the way to go when dealing with the very small hollows and rounds.

The rabbet necessary to guide a No. 2 round is absurdly small; the two points upon which the plane sits are so close that they are somewhat irrelevant. I create a chamfer here and use the above method as shown in Fig. 13-5.

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Fig. 13-5. Another place for steering. When making very small coves, a rabbet plane is impractical.

I also use these methods at times when working with larger planes, but their use is much more sporadic. Again, the further one progresses in his skills, the more individual preferences develop. You may try this method and prefer it – there is no question that many use it quite successfully. I will not argue with success.

— MB

Enzo Mari Table Sold (in the Spirit of Enzo Mari)

Posted on by Lost Art Press

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Note: This table sold.

I recently completed building the Enzo Mari table shown above for an upcoming article in Popular Woodworking Magazine. Typically when I have a piece such as this left over from an article I sell it to an established furniture customer at a slight discount.

But this table is different.

Mari gave his plans for this table (and dozens of others) for free to people. His ideas and hard work were a gift as part of an experiment to see if non-woodworkers could learn something about furniture production.

So I’m going to give away my labor on this project as well.

If you’d like to buy this table, it will cost you only the price of materials ($80). Here are the details.

  1. I cannot ship this table. It is 55’ x 55” x 29”. You need to come get it from our shop in Covington, Ky.
  2. If you do buy it, I’d like for you to report back how well it ages in a few years. I am curious about some aspects of Mari’s design choices.

The table is made from Southern yellow pine. The finish is shou sugi ban (a charred wood finish), which is then topcoated with a beeswax/linseed oil concoction. (No your hands won’t turn black when you use it.)

The joinery is screws and square-shanked nails. Mari designed the base like a bridge truss – it’s clever.

If you want it, send me a message through my personal site here. The first one to say “I’ll take it” gets it. Heck, if you pick it up next week, you’ll get to meet Chris Williams as he’s teaching the Welsh Stick Chair class.

— Christopher Schwarz