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.
The 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.
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 beginto 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.
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 firstpass 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I cannot ship this table. It is 55’ x 55” x 29”. You need to come get it from our shop in Covington, Ky.
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.
Our chore coats have arrived from the factory (except for nine medium-sized coats). John is packaging them up personally and they will ship out next week.
Just in time for summer!
They look fantastic and are extremely well-made. I think you will find them worth the wait. I plan to crank up the air conditioner in the shop and wear mine for a bit.
If your are one of the final nine people to order a size medium, we’ll be in touch to update you on the shipping delay. We hope it won’t be long.
‘Cut & Dried’ is Almost Here Speaking of delays, our printing plant was swamped with work in April and May, so “Cut & Dried: A Woodworker’s Guide to Timber Technology” by Richard Jones was delayed at the plant. It is supposed to ship to us next week.
As a result of this delay, there is still time or order the book and receive the pdf of the book for free. As soon as we receive the shipment of books in our warehouse, then the pdf will cost about $15 more.
Driving through Eastern Kentucky makes me homesick for the mountains of Arkansas.
Something about the contrast – intense natural beauty with equally intense poverty – reminds me of growing up in the Ozarks. And every conversation with the locals is salted with a long family history. Who owns what. And who is owed.
Today I took a long drive into a corner of Eastern Kentucky that has always been heavily wooded. Some of the trees there stood when settlers first picked their way through the Cumberland Gap. Our expedition today was an unlikely crew: Chris Williams (a chairmaker from Wales), Joss Agura (a nurse from Texas) and Brendan Gaffney (a woodworker from New York).
The goal of the day was to see some old-growth trees and get a taste of the world of chairmaker Chester Cornett (read more about Cornett here).
After a spirited hike through Blanton Forest, we made our way to Hazard, Ky., and then to Dwarf, Ky., where Cornett lived and worked for a time.
Many areas of Eastern Kentucky are organized in “hollows,” a word that is pronounced “hollers.” These deep ravines run between steep mountainsides. At the bottom of each ravine is typically a creek with houses perched to either side. The road in and out is one lane. So driver-beware.
Chester had lived up one such hollow in Dwarf. And as we pulled into the tiny town we saw a footbridge that Chester had been photographed on. We stopped and took photos. And then we plunged into a number of hollows off the main road.
The light changes in a hollow. The sky is a narrow slice of pie above, and the green foliage is overwhelming. You expect to see poverty in a hollow. And you’ll see it. But you will also see wealth – fine and tidy houses standing next to single-wide trailers. There’s no zoning out here. And people are just fine with it.
The people are also happy to talk with strangers. Brendan and Joss chatted up the locals to learn more about Chester Cornett, whom the locals called “Hairyman Cornett.”
We found the location of his home in Dwarf. It had been crushed by debris thrown into the hollow during strip mining. This discovery was disappointing in one way. We had hoped to find the building where Chester had lived before moving to Cincinnati.
But Chester’s work isn’t confined to a building, a town or even a country. There’s something almost magical about the work. It makes you drive hours and hours, climb mountains, talk to strangers and so on. So welcome to a very strange club.
The only structure that remains (that I know of) is now the marketing office for the Otterbein Senior Life retirement home (see photo at right).
Speaking of delays, our printing plant was swamped with work in April and May, so “
