On Friday – I think it was Friday – I had my first normal day since June 7, which is the day I left for Germany to see the Saalburg workbench and teach at Dictum GmbH.
Since that trip I’ve been on a nonstop schedule of traveling, taking care of unexpected (and important) family business and trying to keep up with all my publishing obligations. I failed spectacularly. Everything got so crazy that I had to do something very unusual: I canceled my trip last month to the UK and the European Woodworking Show.
While I regret missing that trip, those seven days were a gift and helped me get back on my feet. I was able to take care of some pressing family stuff, finish up some furniture commissions, complete a magazine article I was two months late on and get “From Truths to Tools” and “Carving the Acanthus Leaf” on a fast track to the printer.
So on Friday, I woke up and drank two cups of coffee. I opened my calendar and saw the day was empty. Absolutely clear. I decided to turn off my phone, leave my laptop closed and focus on building my reproduction of the Saalburg workbench for a forthcoming book. Thanks to that day of bliss, the bench now needs just a little cleaning up before I assemble it.
I just opened my calendar for the coming week. Monday is clear. So I think it’s going to be finished by Tuesday.
This post is a reminder (to myself) that somethings have to fall apart. And it’s an apology to all the people I owe phone calls and emails to. I’ll get to them in the next week or so. Just as soon as I have just a few more empty days of healing handwork. I wish I could bottle that stuff.
Later this month we will offer a limited run of 100 Lost Art Press baseball caps that feature the “marriage mark” symbol from “The Anarchist’s Design Book.” And, exciting for us, the hats are being embroidered and stamped by our friends at Texas Heritage Woodworks.
This hat is the first in a line of apparel products that we are working very hard on to make as special as our books. More items are already in the works. Here are the details on the hats.
For the last few years we’ve used US-made hats from Bayside. They are OK, but they aren’t the kind of “I want to wear this hat every day until it becomes rags” hat. So we’ve decided to do something we don’t normally do: We’re using the Chinese-made but completely excellent hat from Adams.
This was the first brand of hat we started using about eight years ago. It is very well-made, breaks in beautifully and has lots of nice details: a mesh liner, a leather adjusting strap and a brass buckle. We can’t find a domestic hat that’s made this well at almost any price (unless you want to pay $100 for a hat).
We sent the hats to Texas Heritage Woodworkers last month and Sarah Thigpen has been busy embroidering them in their shop and stamping the leather strap on the pack with the Texas Heritage Woodworks logo. If you have any of Sarah or Jason’s work (such as their best-in-class tool rolls), you know the work is going to be crisp. Perfect.
The hats will be $27, which includes shipping in the United States (if this hat thing works out we’ll expand it to other countries).
When we have all the hats in-house, we’ll announce a time and day they will go up for sale in the Lost Art Press online store.
After two years of enduring our search for an old building in Covington, our real estate agent showed us something a bit different. It was a large and beautiful unit in an old commercial building. There was a storefront on the bottom. Living space up above. But here’s what was different than every other place we’d seen:
The entire building had been gutted and redone with new everything – mechanicals, plaster, flooring, windows. It even had off-street parking. All we had to do was pick the paint colors. The price was a bit higher than we wanted to pay. But to that the agent said:
“By the time you fix up a place in your price range, you’ll have spent way more than this place costs.”
She was absolutely right. I knew it the moment she said it. But still we said, no thanks.
For me, fixing up an old building is about uncovering the original intent of the builder, removing as much of the modern “improvements” as possible and gently restoring the place back to its original appearance.
During the restoration of the storefront area at 837 Willard Street, we’ve removed thousands of feet of wiring, lots of plumbing and significant amounts of silly ductwork. From the building’s floor, I think we’ve pulled up almost 3” of old floor. The plaster walls had been layer caked in plywood, wainscotting, then stud walls, drywall and then ridiculous moulding.
Justin is the muscle in our demolition efforts. He removed this section of wall with his bare hands.
On Saturday we turned our attention to the garage out back, which will become my machine room. It’s a circa 1905 cinderblock structure that was listed on the city’s fire insurance maps as a stable. So we call it the “horse garage.”
Most of the advice from my friends and neighbors has been along the lines of, “Tear it down and build what you want. It will look better and be cheaper.”
They’re probably right. But that thought won’t enter my head. Once you tear down an old building, it’s gone forever. You can’t bring it back. If a structure can be saved, I think it should be saved.
I may someday regret this attitude. And that day may come this week.
Megan hauls out an early layer crap from the horse garage. She is wicked with a recip saw.
Megan Fitzpatrick, Justin Leib and Brendan Gaffney all pitched Saturday in for a full day of demolition, which filled a 20-yard roll-away dumpster. (I’ll probably have to fill it twice more as I remove the modern gabled roof this week.)
As in the main structure, the stable was layers and layers of crap on the walls and ceilings. The most interesting find from the day was evidence that the stable had been used as a small apartment or house, probably in the 1960s. One of the stable doors had been altered to have a window surrounded by plaster. The other stable door had been converted into an entryway door. And a good deal of abandoned plumbing pointed out where a bathroom and kitchen had been.
In addition to gutting the horse garage, we also removed some modern drywall in the main structure. Here Brendan uses some of his training from the College of the Redwoods (now the Krenov School) to vacuum away what we hope is some blow-in insulation.
Despite all the dust, bugs and debris, we did have one good omen on Saturday: We didn’t find any glitter.
As woodworkers, we tend to think about trees most often in the context of wood. But a living tree is habitat, safe perch, shady spot, daily carbon dioxide sink, and more.
Trees also bear fruit. Until I moved to Indiana, persimmons were novelties: fat juicy globes with exotic names such as Fuyu and Hachiya. Then, one October, a boyfriend proposed a weekend paddle on Lake Monroe (yes, he’d made his own canoe) to a spot rich with persimmons. We filled a couple of shopping bags with squishy fruit and paddled back to the truck. He showed me how to make pulp and shared his grandmother’s recipe for pudding.
Milling persimmons for pulp is a time-consuming process but well worthwhile.
When we pulled the glass dish out of the oven, the kitchen filled with sweet, spicy steam. We let the pudding sit a while to firm up while we whipped some cream. Slice, serve, dollop. Heaven.
Somewhere on the texture spectrum between jello and brownies lies the traditional Midwestern treat persimmon pudding.
Much smaller than their Oriental cousins, our native persimmons are packed with nutrients: 127 kcal per 100 grams of raw fruit (compared to 70 kcal for the same amount of Japanese persimmon, Diospyros Kaki), 33.5 grams of carbohydrate (compared to 18.59), 0.8 grams of protein (versus 0.58), as well as higher than the Japanese persimmon in fat, calcium, and iron. I offer this comparison not as an exercise in nationalism, but to help explain why the peoples native to this land considered putchamin an important food.
The fruit of Diospyros Virginiana, the persimmon native to eastern and Midwestern states, is generally considered unfit to eat until it has fallen on the ground. Bite into an unripe fruit and you’ll experience a serious tannin pucker.
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A couple of years after my first taste of persimmon pudding I was looking for an affordable property where I could have a workshop. The first place I visited fit the bill and came with a bonus: an old persimmon tree on the front lawn and a couple more on the fence line.
Fast-forward fourteen years. After feeding many a deer (and two of my dogs) and giving us fruit for countless puddings, the old tree in our front yard finally gave up the ghost last winter. We had plenty of advance notice: fewer leaves each spring, more limbs dropped per thunderstorm. Of course it’s not really gone: Persimmons spread through their roots to form groves. Several daughter trees are growing to maturity in the garden.
Two of the daughters took root next to each other, on opposite sides of the garden path. I’ll continue pruning them so that they’ll eventually form an arch.A large dead tree in the front yard is hardly attractive. “Can we please cut it down?” I asked my husband last spring. I wasn’t asking for permission; he’s the one who uses a chainsaw. I’ll use industrial shop equipment any day, but chainsaws terrify me. “No,” he said; “it offers wild birds refuge from Louis [the shop cat].” Spring turned to summer, and concern for the birds’ safety turned into “Taking that tree down is going to be a huge project. Do you have any idea how much work it’s going to be, cleaning up those limbs?” Clearly not a job for the itchy, sweaty months. Now that fall is here (if tentatively), we’ll take it down and give some of the wood to our friend Max Monts to turn into bowls, because as many readers will already be aware, persimmon is related to ebony.–Nancy Hiller, author of Making Things Work
You can now place a pre-publication order for Mary May’s “Carving the Acanthus Leaf” in the Lost Art Press online store. The book is $49, which includes free shipping in the United States and Canada.
Customers who place a pre-publication order will receive a free and immediate pdf download of the book. The book is expected to ship in late November. You can download a sample chapter of the book here.
For customers outside the United States, we will offer this book to all our international retailers (a list of retailers is here). It is the decision of the retailer as to whether they carry this book or not.
“Carving the Acanthus Leaf” is May’s first book and is the result of three years of intense work. It is a deep exploration into this iconic leaf, which has been a cornerstone of Western ornamentation for thousands of years. May, a professional carver and instructor, starts her book at the beginning. She covers carving tools and sharpening with the efficiency of someone who has taught for years. Then she plunges the reader directly into the work.
It begins with a simple leaf that requires just a few tools. The book then progresses through 13 variations of leaves up to the highly ornate Renaissance and Rococo forms. Each lesson builds on the earlier ones as the complexity slowly increases.
One remarkable aspect of the book is how May has structured each chapter. Each chapter begins with a short discussion of how this particular leaf appears in architecture or the decorative arts, with photos May has taken from her travels around the world. Then you learn how to draw the leaf from scratch. Though you are provided with a full-size or scaled drawing of each leaf, May insists that drawing the leaf makes it easier to carve it. Each step of the drawing process is illustrated in detail.
As May explains how to carve the leaf, she augments each step with multiple photos and illustrations that show where and how each tool should move through the work. The result is that each leaf can have as many as 100 photos and illustrations of each step of the carving process.
In addition to the intense instruction, May also provides a short essay between every chapter that illustrates her journey from a young pumpkin carver to the world-renowned carver she is today. The overall effect is like apprenticing with a master carver, with both the demanding instruction and the personal experiences that make woodworking such a rich craft.
“Carving the Acanthus Leaf” is manufactured to survive many hours of use in the shop. The heavy paper is both glued and sewn so the book will lie flat on your benchtop without the pages coming loose. The pages are protected by cloth-covered hardboards and a tear-resistant dust jacket to protect its contents. This is a permanent book – produced and printed entirely in the United States.
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