Published by John A. Gray and Green, printers. Photo courtesy of: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-pga-01411.
“Utility furniture is now on the market, and everyone is able to see in what respects it differs from the uncontrolled product, and to form conclusions as to what extent we may expect it to influence furniture design of the future. The story of mankind with all its perverse, twists and turns, its chivalries, its discoveries, its unconquerable vanities, and its tragedies, stamps itself even on our furniture, so that the very line of a chair-leg or the rake of a chair-back may be a dumb witness to the end of an epoch or the herald of a new age. But there is more than mere history in the shapes of things: there is the sum total of human experience.
“When a craftsman of to-day sets to work to make a chair, the knowledge which he takes so much for granted is the stored-up inheritance of generations of craftsmen who had preceded him. He is profiting by their discoveries, their failures, and adding whatever of its own particular worth in new processes the present age has to offer. Only in our own age the ratio of skilled craftsmen is diminishing, and with so much that is good and civilised in process of being destroyed, one wonders how much will survive.
“Not that it is difficult to see that war will leave behind it advancement in some branches of knowledge, not only in weapons of destruction. We may, for instance, look for considerable advance in surgery, learned on the living bodies of shattered men, a considerable advance in chemical discovery, in aviation, but these are not the things on which our civilisation can be rebuilt. We are finding to our cost that men may have these and still be barbarous. Civilisation is founded on a sense of order, measure, proportion, self-control both of the mind and of the body, exactly the qualities which the acquisition of any true skill tends to develop. In fact, we may say that it is upon the world’s craftsmen in wood, stone, clay, who have made it possible for the living thought of one generation to be handed on to the next, to be a living witness of what man can do, and a living challenge, a standard to live up to and, if possible, surpass. To transmute the soaring vision of man’s destiny into a cathedral needed the work of stonemasons, carpenters, glassmakers, just as it took a craftsman to conceive of the letters in wood from which modern bookcraft had its beginning. Always the craftsman has been the conserver, the guardian, who passed on what was imperishable from one age to another, not failing to set his own seal upon it in the doing. Because no man’s work is exactly like anothers. There are always the little individual characteristics that stamp it as his own, giving it just that living touch which the machine will always lack.
“But now that the machine is with us, what are we to do about it? We cannot go back, even if we would. It has brought leisure and amenities which we value, and which could, if we would, be turned to good account. For leisure and amenities provide just that opportunity of developing those creative qualities of which modern life tends to rob us and which will be badly needed in the world after the war. It is only by doing creative work of some sort that a man learns both to know himself and to train himself for more and better work, and it is essentially the mark of the civilised man. To be indifferent, careless of one’s time, to want only to be amused, is to invite personal disintegration, a loss of personality which is not only a loss to oneself but to the community at large. For after the war we shall want men of personality, men of creative ability, men with patience, shrewdness and sound judgment to deal with the problems of peace. The new world cannot be a good world unless we conserve for it all that we have inherited of lasting value from the old. Only the barbarian blindly destroys. It takes civilised man—the man with the craftsman spirit—who is careful to see that beauty does not perish, to pass it on.”
FIG. 1. A. AN OLD METHOD. Tenons and wedges were cut back in the stiles and a “pocket piece“ let in, making a first class finish. B. A BAD METHOD. Wedges are driven into the tenons themselves, causing splits
“We’ll glue those wedges and tenons!” How often is this explanation heard when gluing up framed work. A usual response being to dip the wedges into the glue and drive them hard home, unless the wedges break off or bottom badly.
If we analyse the reason for wedging a joint we find that the wedges are provided to ensure a compression in the fibres of the tenons to equalise the inevitable movement due to age and conditions. At the same time it is necessary to provide a mortise with parallel sides for the tenon, so allowing for movement.
Take as an example a through mortised and tenoned wedged joint, the shoulders being tightly fitting to ensure rigidity in the work. In framing up we glue the shoulders and a small adjacent area only of the tenon, to allow the movement along the tenon (see Fig. 3 B). It will be obvious that to solidly glue the whole joint is defeating the essential object of that particular joint.
The logical method would be to glue the shoulders as usual, place the long grain edge of the wedge to the tenon, but do not glue (it may in fact be slightly greased), but gluing the remaining parts of the wedge into the mortise of the stile, making a parallel path for the tenon, but under compression. A joint made in this manner will not open at the shoulders.
FIG. 2. DIAGONAL WEDGED TENONS IN THIN WOOD. This method is permissible in this case
In the case of double tenons, drive the outside wedges first to set the compression, the inner ones then being driven to equalise the compression on the tenons.
Good quality work of the old days had the tenons and wedges cut back in the stiles to allow for shrinkage clearance, and a pocket piece let in and flushed off in the stiles, making a workmanlike job (Fig. 1 A).
FIG. 3. A. THE EFFECT OF WEDGES INSERTED IN THE TENON AND GLUING ALL OVER. Tenon is held at outer edge of stile and shrinkage takes place away from shoulder B. THE CORRECT METHOD. Wedges are placed between tenon and sides of mortise, and only the shaded area of tenon is glued. Shrinkage of stile can then take place at its outer edge, but shoulder holds firm
A Bad Fault. An odious method becoming prevalent to-day is tenon splitting and wedging the tenon out into a fantail in the mortise; it is apparent that the least shrinkage will pull the shoulders right open, when all rigidity in the work vanishes (see Figs. 1B and 3A).
Such a method is only permissible when diagonal wedging in thin material such as carcase construction, shelves to ends (Fig. 2), or in fox-wedging in the appropriate joints.
Selecting suitable joints and framing them up is a complicated matter at times, but consideration on the foregoing lines will amply repay the craftsman in the quality of the work he produces.
We had our first inspection from the Covington fire department this week and were told to fix something I’ve been meaning to get around to for 18 months: an exit sign.
We had a lighted exit sign when I purchased “The Blaze” more than two years ago. But the sign was super nasty, painted in glitter and covered (somehow) with hair. Hair? What the…? I ripped down the sign when I removed the odd ventilation fan (also covered in hair) and about three metric miles of sub-code electrical wiring.
Today we installed a hairless exit sign that was 100 percent to code, and we’re adding an “anti-blowjob” light to the front door to boot. I feel this light needs explanation.
Our shop is on a busy street corner that is used by everyone from elementary school students to prostitutes. When the sun goes down, some of the prostitutes have decided to use our shop’s stoop for their customer service duties. When this happens, the neighbors call the cops, and I get a nastygram from the police about the illegal activity on my property.
If I receive a couple more of those police reports I’m told I might be declared a nuisance by the city.
And so I debated today as to whether I should install a light above our door or monetize the whole thing with a webcam.
Dividers work better if the tips match the job you’re doing. For layout chores, such as scribing arcs or setting out your joinery, the dividers’ tips need to match the wood you are using. Sharper tips will prevent the tips from skating on hard woods. And dull tips are needed in soft woods to prevent from marking the work too deeply.
In this video, Raney demonstrates how to make the tips sharper or duller using fine sandpaper stuck to a flat surface (a granite block in this instance). Changing the tips from dull to sharp takes only about two minutes (I timed him). And the results are worth the extra effort.
Editor’s note: Aside from my family, my three deepest passions in life are woodworking, food and music. Almost every night I cook a meal while listening to music and surrounded by the things I’ve built. I have deep-seated philosophies about kitchens and kitchen tools that parallel my writings on shops, tools and workbenches. So after talking to Nancy Hiller about her approach to kitchens and cabinets, I knew we had to do a book together on this topic.
It will be a book that seeks to overturn the decades of “rip it out” advice you get from television, magazines, books and the Internet. It will be a be a book for people who would rather build than buy. And who want their kitchen to be in harmony with their house, their families and their lives. And so let me turn things over to Nancy.
— Christopher Schwarz
Kitchen cabinets are the poor step-sister of the furniture making world. You know – the homely one with a sixth-grade education who processes fish for a living and always seems to have that smell.
“He builds cabinets,” sniffed one of my woodworking friends a few years back, referring to an acquaintance. The statement was nowhere near as straightforward as those three simple words might suggest. He spoke with a pained expression, lowering his voice to a near-whisper when he got to “cabinets.” Clearly this was some kind of shameful secret; building cabinets made the acquaintance…well, you know, not a real woodworker. He might as well have been telling me the guy’d been caught in flagrante with a blow-up doll.
“Why would I want to build plywood boxes when I could be building 18th-century highboys?” remarked another woodworking friend. The question was rhetorical, more a way of announcing that he’d broken into the East Coast market for period Americana and so escaped the obscurity of the rural workshop where he’d spent years building cabinets, millwork and furniture for the local market.
You get the picture. Among woodworkers, kitchen cabinets are the Zero Bar to the highboys’ Lindt truffle: a species of work beneath those with refined taste and higher skills.
One wall of the kitchen Daniel and I did in Washington, D.C., in 2006, described in the story “Daniel” in Making Things Work.
Most woodworkers who build cabinets do so for the same reason as our furniture-making forebears built coffins in addition to tables and chairs: because they offer a source of income that helps even out the road between freestanding furniture commissions. It’s easy to look down on built-ins when your livelihood doesn’t depend on woodworking, or when you are:
• Retired
• Your woodworking venture is subsidized by a spouse’s income
• You’ve tapped into a rich vein of market popularity
• Etc.
Not everyone is so fortunate.
How did the lowly kitchen cabinet become a friend to many who trained as furniture makers, imagining we’d spend our days hand cutting dovetails and French polishing meticulously inlaid cutlery canteens? The answer has as much to do with publishing, advertising and banking as with wood and tools. Ultimately it boils down to the commodification of the home.
We’re talking real estate. Home ownership today is light years away from that of 200, 100 or even 70 years ago, when the people who owned what’s now my acre of semi-rural land cut down some trees, dug up some rocks and built themselves a simple board-and-batten-sided cabin worthy of Snuffy Smith. Today a massive industry surrounds home ownership, from Realtors (yes, that term is trademarked and officially requires an upper-case “R”) and appraisers to title companies, banks and building inspectors. There has been a serious shift during the past century in how many of us think of our homes: They no longer simply represent shelter and a central base for family, but are the largest financial investment most of us will ever make – one that, with luck, may increase our wealth at a rate that leaves inflation panting breathlessly in the dust.
As with any investment, we’re urged to put ourselves in the hands of expert advisers. And there’s an army of them out there. Take the wildly popular hosts of home improvement shows on HGTV (please, take them) – that cast of smiling, perfectly groomed characters eager to instruct you in the magical art of transforming a hovel into an “urban oasis” or liberating yourself from the corporate rat race by hitching a ride on the house-flipping bandwagon. Take the legions of salespeople at home stores across the nation, who will gladly guide you through one cabinet display after another until you’re dizzy from over-exposure to CNC-routed fretwork, dedicated mixer cabinets with lift-up stands and decorative wine racks. Take the web-based magazines with their daily examples of designer ideas to “steal” and big-name-brand “hacks.” Or that modern means to keep yourself forever in debt, the home equity loan, advertisements for which have long encouraged us to treat our houses as ATMs.
To be a contemporary homeowner is to feel an almost moral obligation to spend money on your house. Never mind how your friends may judge your taste on seeing you still have that Laura Ashley “Dandelion” wallpaper from circa 1983; there’s a sense that if you’re not religiously “updating,” you may be losing financial ground.
I hung this Laura Ashley “Dandelion” wallpaper in the kitchen of the first house my husband and I bought, a skinny terrace (row) house in a working-class neighborhood of the English city Reading. How I loved that wallpaper.
One result of this topsy-turvy mindset is that customers are generally more willing to shell out tens of thousands of dollars on something they believe will increase the value of their house than on a piece of freestanding furniture. Built-in cabinets even fall into a different category in the world of sales tax: They are “improvements to real estate.” People rationalize them as an investment. That artisan-made dining table? Arguably a frivolous buy in comparison.
Of course, you can only get the value of a kitchen remodel out of a house so many times. Property values in most regions don’t increase at anything like the rate that would be necessary to cover the tens (sometimes hundreds) of thousands spent on kitchens. And then there’s the troublesome fact that new cabinets installed as part of a kitchen update undertaken to help sell a house are routinely ripped out by the new homeowners, only to be replaced by something more in line with their own taste. Never mind the so-called “green design” professional who encourages you to tear out your laminate counters and replace them with a “sustainable” composite incorporating recycled glass. The preoccupation with updating results in a mind-boggling amount of waste. These are real-world caveats that some of us point out to prospective clients as we urge them to think about what they really want and need, as distinct from what other experts (and friends, and relatives) are telling them they should want. Despite being urged repeatedly by contractors to blow out the walls of their 1910s kitchens per the dictates of “open concept” design, I have found clients almost giddy with relief at encountering a professional who appreciates the value of rooms.
That said, I understand the desire for a change of scene, a shift in tone. There are ways to rework your kitchen without spending a fortune or increasing the elevation of your local landfill. The first requirement is simply to think. In this process, context is your friend. I’m talking about context broadly understood: where you are in life; what resources you have access to in terms of money, unusual materials or time; the architectural style of your home; and so forth. For the past 20 years I have made my living largely by working with clients to respond creatively to a variety of realities many designers and cabinetmakers consider limitations. The book I’m writing for Lost Art Press will be full of these and other ways to approach kitchen design, build cabinets and devise creative solutions to problems.
