Something that quietly becomes clear in Nancy Hiller’s newest book of essays (“Shop Tails,” now shipping) is a subtle underlying theme of worth. “Blue-collar” vs. “white.” Grades earned, degrees obtained and at which institution. Worth in the eye of friend, teacher, sibling, parent, boss, client, beholder. Critique. The worth of a commission. Representation in a shop. The worth of a stray. Staying, leaving and their reflection of your worth to self and others. The worth not of a house, but of a home. The worth of pets, even when problematic, and love, and life. The worth of good pudding. Self-worth.
An excerpt:
“What I wanted, for 50 years, was to prove that people were wrong about me, to exceed their low expectations. When people mentally translated my work as a furniture maker to “She makes ‘furniture’ out of pallets or fruit crates and decorates her work with cut-outs of ducks and bunnies – you know, because that’s what women like,” I would show them my take on an Edwardian hallstand with a perfectly fitted door and drawer and a cornice of compound bevels. Anyone who assumed that, as a tradesperson, I would be less intellectually curious and articulate than someone who works in an office (any kind of office would do; this is a matter of longstanding prejudice against “manual” and “blue-collar” workers) would have to square that assumption with a growing body of published essays and books in which I brought my academic training in classical languages, history and ethics to bear on the social and economic significance of commonplace things such as kitchen furnishings. I did my best to illustrate the ways in which a house, typically thought of as “property,” could fulfill many of the roles we usually associate with a human partner. In response to the critics who might deride my ways of putting cabinets together, I would point out that there really are as many ways to build a cabinet as there are cabinetmakers, not to mention that the cabinets I build, however simple their construction, are far stronger than most that are commercially made.”
Last week one of my twin 11-year-old boys was outside when our dog, Io, found a squirrel, already hurt and hiding in a bush. He pulled it out proudly, carrying it by its tail. My son yelled at him to drop it. On its side, its big beautiful brown eye stared at us while it breathed ever-shallower breaths. My other son appeared, and we gathered a box and a towel. One boy bit his tongue, the other was indignant: “We can’t save him. It won’t work.” Two defense mechanisms that failed to stop silent tears. I thought, It is OK to be 11 and soft while simultaneously thinking how best to end a small animal’s life in order to end its palpable pain, knowing I couldn’t possibly actually do it. (The squirrel died on its own shortly after.)
I share this story because my sons’ recognition of the squirrel’s worth in that moment reminded me of something Nancy wrote to me, the day before this incident:
“Every time I think about ‘Shop Tails’ I am filled with delight at the thought that the stories of these animals, some of them strays, some wild, others abandoned to the shelter, get to be commemorated in a book – a beautifully produced hardbound book, with pictures. There’s something about this that I still don’t even quite grasp. It’s the opposite of the usual publishing world, where Important People are the only ones who get remembered or have their stories told. (Yes, thankfully that has been changing over the past 40 years, but I still see a distressingly overwhelming hangover from the middle of the 20th century and before.) There’s something wondrous about this noticing of the rejected and otherwise-un-notable, especially those who had short lives. And of course I’m aware that there’s a vast genre of books about animals, this one is by no means alone, etc. But still! Little Alfie with his explosive digestive problems and impossible William, pathologically jealous Henny, champion-of-gratefulness/gimp-boy Joey, the turkey vulture by the side of the road, and ‘Henry’ the mourning dove, all get their day, as do others. It’s a kind of triumph. Yeah, these stories are written from my perspective, not the animals’, but that’s a limitation we have to live with.”
There’s a shift taking place in the woodworking community, where more people than ever before are getting to see their worth in more welcoming environments Among them The Chairmaker’s Toolbox, a slew of Instagram feeds that show work by members of populations that have long been underrepresented by the majority of woodworking populations, the proliferation of scholarships for classes at woodworking schools that are now available to members of underrepresented populations and the “Gallery” in Fine Woodworking magazine.
It took Nancy more than half a century to come to terms with her own worth, both in the shop and out. In doing so, she has acknowledged the danger of being too dependent on outside forces – of people who express their approval, just as much as those who express their opposition. Consider the consequences this can have on representation in community, in craft – even in the personal work you do, in the choices you make about the tools you buy or the pieces you make. They’re huge.
“It suddenly felt deeply exhausting,” she writes. “I let my awareness of that exhaustion sink in. Whatever might happen with the course of my cancer, I was not going back to my old ways of living.”
This book is a celebration of not just the “otherwise un-notable,” but also of the notable who are just beginning to realize their worth. And in that, I imagine Nancy’s not alone.
While talking chairs over a beer on an evening during the Chair Chat Class week, the conversation eventually turned upon the Swedish stick chair tradition in general, and Mats Palmquist’s 2018 book “Träsmak” in particular. As it happened, that book and a number of others had been laid out by Chrisropher Schwarz on the coffee table in the Covington Mechanical Library for us to peruse and, if so inclined, be inspired by for our upcoming chair builds.
It is lavishly illustrated with many hundreds of excellent photos of Swedish stick chairs, their design and their production over the last 170 or so years, so as a visual source of design inspiration, it works a treat. The text complements this with an in-depth look at the history of stick chair design and manufacture in Sweden during the same period. In Swedish. Which means that, unless you can at least decipher that language, or have the time on your hands to take the text through machine translation (and the patience to deal with the pitfalls thereof), like Chris and most other non-Scandinavians, you will only be able to view, not read. So, after I had gone on for a bit about what “Träsmak” actually has to say, Chris gave me a look and asked “how about you write a presentation of the book for the blog?”. As you can see, I agreed.
By the way, “presentation” is a key word; this blog post is not meant to be review, although I do express the occasional opinion or add snippets of information not out of the book. But the basic idea is to give the non-Swedish speaking readership of the blog a taste (pun intended – see below) of what it is all about. Not, however, by sticking to the structure of the book, which, from written sources, photos, memories and anecdotes, weaves a semi-chronologically presented, rather detailed tapestry of intermingled producers, designers and chairs. This makes for great reading and browsing but is not easy to sum up. I will instead attempt to identify some main threads, to stay with the tapestry analogy, and talk about them briefly, one at a time. But for a proper look, get the book!
‘Träsmak – En bok om svenska pinnstolar‘
First, though, the title: What it does it mean?
Trä is wood, and smak is taste or flavour, so a literal translation could be “The Flavour of Wood.” As an idiomatic expression, however, träsmak means a benumbed posterior from sitting on a hard or uncomfortable seat. So, Numb Butt, which, according to the author, has often been the result of sitting on these chairs: “It has been said that the stick chair is the only democratic piece of furniture. It is equally uncomfortable to all.”
As for the subtitle, en = one, a or an, bok = book, om = about, svenska = Swedish while pinnstolar is the plural of pinnstol = stick chair, from pinne = stick, and stol = chair. So, A Book About Swedish Stick Chairs.
Origin Story No. 2: The Book
Mats Palmquist has worked as a journalist, writer and graphic designer for more than 40 years. As far as I know, he’s not a woodworker, but he talks about a long-standing interest in furniture design, and about how, many years ago, he used to see plenty of stick chairs going for not much money at flea markets. His interest roused, he tried to find out more, but soon realised that very little had been written about them. Long years of gathering what information he could find eventually led to the thought that maybe he’d better write about the subject himself. Thus, while freely acknowledging it to be far from complete, he calls the result “a book somewhat like what [he] missed back then.”
Origin Story No. 3: Swedish Stick Chairs
Stick chairs are ubiquitous in the Swedish furniture landscape and have been since the second half of the 19th century – witness Palmquist talking about always finding them at flea markets. Witness also my own experience, growing up in Sweden in the 1960s and 70s. We had a set in the kitchen, so did my grandparents. Stick chairs were in the homes of family and friends, in restaurants, in public spaces. You never really noticed them; they were just there. So normal that they tended to disappear into the background, even as you sat on them.
And for a long time, there was a large industry to make them, some of which survives to this day.
Apparently it can all be traced back to just three people, in an origin story that seems reasonably reliable. As Palmquist tells it, it began sometime in the 1850s, with a Mrs. Henrietta Killander, at the time lady of the manor at the Hook Estate in Svenarum Parish, some 20 miles south of Jönköping in the province of Småland in southern Sweden. She asked Jonas Fagerlund, the carpenter at close-by Lindefors Bruk iron works (that the Killander family also owned), to make a chair from a design of hers. Fagerlund in turn asked a certain Daniel Ljungqvist, for help. The latter was known for his skill in making spinning wheels, an implement that usually involves a staked construction and a number of turned sticks. He would thus have had a foot-powered lathe and been familiar with turning. After the first chair had met with approval, a further number were commissioned from the same two men.
The Killander family still owns this chair, said to be one of the original ones from the 1850s. If so, it confirms that Mrs. Killander’s design was closely based on English Windsor-style back chairs.
These chairs looked very much like English Windsor back chairs of the same era, but where Mrs. Killander found her inspiration for the design is not known. There is no evidence that she had been abroad, but small numbers of Windsor-inspired chairs had been made by Swedish cabinetmakers since the late 1700s. She may thus have seen some of those, or imported Windsors, or even just pictures of them; the importance of her design and commission lies not in any claim to originality, but in the impulse it gave to in particular Daniel Ljungqvist, who continued to make chairs like these. The idea soon passed from him to local smallholders, for whom it was a good way to make some cash on the side. The raw material – mostly birch – could be found in abundance pretty much on the doorstep, while a user-made, foot-powered lathe was well within reach, both practically and financially. The resulting chairs were then sold in town – Jönköping – or at fairs, and met with a steady enough demand to warrant continued supply.
From Farms to Factories
This nascent cottage industry soon outgrew the cottages where it got its start, and in the 1860s began to turn into an initially small and somewhat primitive but clearly factory-based proto-industry. First out was a certain Johan Wilhelm Thunander, who in 1863, at 19 years old and together with two others, began making chairs by hand at Harkeryd Farm, again in Svenarum Parish. They soon also employed a man who had worked with Daniel Ljungqvist. Thunander eventually came up with the idea to use water power to run the lathe, first at a local flour mill. In 1870 the activities were moved to Horshaga Farm, strategically located next to running water, and where, under the name of Hagafors Stolfabrik (fors = rapids; stolfabrik = chair factory), the machines running on water power soon included band saw, drill press and jointer.
The Hagafors Chair Factory in 1906. Out in front is Johan Wilhelm Thunander, the owner, with one of his sons.
Two other stick chair factory pioneers in the area were Carl Johan Wigell, who started making chairs in nearby Malmbäck in 1868, and Per Johan Andersson, who began his business in Svenarum in 1870, but in 1882 moved the 25 or so miles north-east to Nässjö, a town newly founded around the coming together of five different railroad lines, including the Southern Main Line connecting Malmö to Stockholm. The business was later named after the town as Nässjö Stolfabrik, and eventually became the most productive stick chair factory in Sweden.
On both sides of the turn of the 20th century, many other factories sprang up, first all over Småland, in places like Jönköping, Värnamo, Bodafors, Sävsjö, Vetlanda, Diö, Vaggeryd, Skillingaryd, Smålandsstenar, Moheda, Tranås and more besides, then elsewhere in Sweden, including Edsbyn, Tallåsen, Sparreholm, Holmsund, Stockholm, Tibro and Örebro. Steam (and later electric) power soon supplemented or replaced water for running machines.
There’s not room here to go into such detail as the book does on these many companies and factories and their varying fortunes, but of the original three, Hagafors Stolfabrik gradually ceased production in the mid-1960s, while Nässjö Stolfabrik went bankrupt and closed its doors in 1991/92. Wigells, though, are in business in Malmbäck to this day, and still make stick chairs (and many other types of furniture besides).
From Windsor to Swedish Mid-Century Modern – or SMC Rustic
Up until the late 1920s or so, most (possibly even all) of the stick chairs made in Sweden by these many factories look very much the same, irrespective of who made them. There will of course have been differences of quality, and a plethora of models – back chairs, arm chairs, rocking chairs and so on – with more or less subtle variations in design and finish, but judging from how Palmquist presents the matter, both in pictures and in writing, they were all riffing on a Windsor theme and on each other: decoratively turned legs and sticks; typically curly seat and comb shapes; marked saddling. In short, the Windsor works.
With the arrival in Sweden of Functionalism in the years around the 1930 Stockholm Exhibition this begins to change, and in particular during what might be termed a Golden Age for these chairs in the 1940s, 50s and 60s, a rich and distinctively Swedish stick chair language evolves through the work of a number of well-known and successful designers: Uno Åhrén, Carl Malmsten, Sven-Erik Fryklund, Yngve Ekström, Sonna Rosén, Gunnar Eklöf, and (from Finland) Ilmari Tapiovaara, to mention just a few of the bigger names.
Instead of the old, decorative turnings, legs and sticks become smoothly rounded, seats and combs lose their curlicues, saddling is usually discrete or non-existent, with some seats even made from form-pressed veneer. Much of it is made to fit into what is now often called a Mid-Century Modern aesthetic (including some more daring experiments in form, now perhaps a tad dated), with others in more of a (faux) Rustic style.
This design trend in fact continues to this day. Certain classics from the 40s and 50s are still produced (see also below), and although contemporary designers – amongst those whose work is mentioned in the book are Nirvan Richter, Lina Nordqvist, Thomas Sandell, Markus Johansson, Mårten Cyrén and Jonas Lindvall – may try to stretch the envelope in certain ways, they are yet well grounded in the forms and designs of the mid-20th century.
Oh, and – no surprise – Ikea has of course produced quite a number of stick chairs over the years; almost 50 different designs in fact. In earlier years Ikea often just sold whatever stick chair models were on offer from their suppliers, but with time the company’s chairs came to be designed directly for them by designers such as Gillis Lundgren, Bengt Ruda, Erik Wörts, Karin Mobring, Tomas Jelinek and Nike Karlsson.
Production Processes: Continuity & Change
It should perhaps be said that, even if you read Swedish, “Träsmak” will not teach you how to build Swedish stick chairs; it primarily covers their company and design history. There are, however, some comparatively brief but quite interesting passages on how the work was and is done.
As already mentioned, the production context very quickly became factory based, and powered tools and machines have been involved from early on. As example, Palmquist quotes a newspaper article from 1884 on the stick chair industry in Jönköping, where at the time 20 manufacturers turned out some 60,000 chairs a year, and, according to the article, a machine for saddling seats had just come into use that could do in an hour what a skilled worker needed ten to achieve.
That said, a very interesting account by a certain Allvin Leo, who at 13 years old in 1943 began working at Hagafors Stolfabrik, on how chairs were made there back then makes it clear that many manual or semi-manual elements were still involved. He furthermore explains that the factory bought the timber as logs in the round, and did all further processing themselves, including air and kiln drying.
In fact, from Palmquist’s accounts of modern-day production at places like Stolab and Wigells, it is clear that although some parts of the process are now fully automated. Others, for example assembly, are still skilled jobs done pretty much the way it has always been done: with a hammer for assmebly (although compressed air lends a helping hand with pressing some parts together) and glue.
Modern-day stick chairs (Arka and Lilla Åland) being assembled at Stolab in Smålandsstenar.
Swedish stick chair production has also seen its fair share of experimentation, not only with form but also with construction methods. The newspaper article from 1884 talks about how the machine processes led to chair parts being sufficiently interchangeable that chairs could be exported unassembled, thereby saving on both packaging, transport and tariff costs. From at least the 1940s, form-pressed veneer seats has been a way to save on chair weight and speed up production of certain designs. And legs screwed into seats or hardware has both helped production and permitted stick chairs to be (partially) flat-packed.
An Influential Chair & Its Many Children
Probably the most well-known Swedish stick chair of all times is Lilla Åland by Carl Malmsten, a chair that has been in continuous production at Stolab in Smålandsstenar since 1942.
On a visit to Finström Church in the Åland Islands with a group of his students, Malmsten spotted an old stick chair, which they went on to measure and make drawings of. The maker was unknown, but it most likely dated from the latter part of the 19th century, and was in all respects a typical Swedish Windsor-like stick back chair. While most of the actual work was done by one of the students, Sven-Erik Fryklund, then 18 years old, Malmsten supervised and signed off on the design, and eventually handed its manufacture to Stolab.
Then in 1950 Hagafors Stolfabrik began production of Haga, a variation on the design that was entirely by Fryklund’s hand, as was a later (1978) style updated and simplified as Bas (= Basic) for Kooperativa Förbundet, the Swedish Co-op Union.
And in 2010 Nirvan Richter was heavily influenced by both the Malmsten and Fryklund designs when he developed his Pinnstol that is produced by Wigells and sold by the Norrgavel furniture company.
Four famous descendants. From left to right Lilla Åland (Malmsten with Fryklund, 1939), Haga (Fryklund, 1950), Bas (Fryklund, 1978) and Pinnstol (Richter, 2010).
To my mind, all four can be considered almost archetypes of the modern Swedish stick chair; this kind of chair is what I think of first when I hear the word pinnstol, and I suspect the same would be true for many Swedes today.
Concluding Comments
Although the above is but a brief summary of what is after all a book of 200+ pages, I hope it has given both a basic understanding of the book itself and, by extension, a potted history of the modern Swedish stick chair.
It may also have occurred to informed readers that the chairs in this book are not really stick chairs by the Lost Art Press definition, as they were and are factory made and mass produced. This is not a meant in a derogatory sense – just as a clarification. There is no mention in the book of any vernacular stick chair tradition in Sweden, before or during the time period covered. This does not exclude one having existed – staked construction techniques were certainly known and used – but that is not something that Palmquist sets out to explore. (A while back I wrote up some extremely limited research on the matter in a comment to a Klaus Skrudland post here on the blog; if ever I find the time, I’d love to pursue that line of inquiry.)
No matter your definition of “stick chair” though, “Träsmak” is a really interesting book, and well worth buying, even if you cannot or would struggle to read it. The photos are excellent and many, so it is a fantastic visual source of inspiration and ideas for things such as seat and comb shapes, stick configurations and ways to vary a theme. Not least a woodworker familiar with the American Windsor form would, I think, find much to glean from the similarity of difference (to coin an expression) between two forms with shared roots.
As mentioned above it is not a book of instruction, so some knowledge of how to make a stick chair would be needed for any inspiration to be practically applicable, but even just as something to browse through for the beauty of so many of the chairs I find it most worthwhile.
It is also a gorgeous book as such, with great graphic design, properly stitched signatures, a heavy-duty, half-cloth hard cover and nicely printed on good paper in the European Union.
Practical Details for Getting Hold of the Book
“Träsmak – En bok om svenska pinnstolar” is published by Historiska Media, a medium-sized independent Swedish publisher of books on history and cultural history. It first came out in 2018 and, at the time of writing, is still in print.
Historiska Media has a web shop, but only delivers to Sweden. Outside of Sweden, use the ISBN (978-91-7545-783-3) to order it through a local bookstore. (It might also be possible to arrange an inter-library loan through one’s local library; for the curious-but-less-inclined-to-buy, this possibility could be worth exploring.)
Jonathan Fisher (1768-1847) was the first settled minister of the frontier town of Blue Hill, Maine. Harvard-educated and handy with an axe, Fisher spent his adult life building furniture for his community. Fortunately for us, Fisher recorded every aspect of his life as a woodworker and minister on the frontier.
In this book, Klein, the founder of Mortise & Tenon Magazine, examines what might be the most complete record of the life of an early 19th-century American craftsman. Using Fisher’s papers, his tools and the surviving furniture, Klein paints a picture of a man of remarkable mechanical genius, seemingly boundless energy and the deepest devotion. It is a portrait that is at times both familiar and completely alien to a modern reader – and one that will likely change your view of furniture making in the early days of the United States.
The value of a minister’s library was substantial and, therefore, the fact that Fisher invested time in the construction of a desk and bookcase is not surprising. One biographer calculated that Fisher owned approximately 300 books, describing it as “not an inconsiderable store for a poor minister in a small village.” That Fisher valued reading is even seen in the plans for his house in which one of only two items of furniture depicted was a bookcase in the kitchen.
Though Fisher’s desk and bookcase is not explicitly mentioned in the surviving journal entries, attribution can be confidently made based on provenance, numerous construction features and the homemade wooden lock on the door.
The desk and bookcase was an essential piece of furniture for a minister because it housed his most important books.
The desk is constructed of pine and was painted (although the current paint is modern). The desk has three drawers and downward-extending lopers that provide a slanted writing surface. At the top of the writing surface, there is a small secret compartment with a sliding-dovetail lid for valuables. The bookcase has both full-length shelves as well as small compartments for letters, etc. The panel doors lap with a beveled edge when closed, and a homemade wooden lock secures the minister’s library from tampering. Despite the fact that the lock operated with a key that is now missing, there is an identical lock on the door to his clock face that still functions, operating by turning a knob. Fisher made many wooden latches in his house, all of which are fascinating, but these locks are particularly delightful. They are easy to overlook by assuming that they are the same metal locks Fisher might have purchased from Mr. Witham’s store at the head of the bay, but they are clearly Fisher-made and completely made of wood. Their delicateness and smoothness of operation add a touch of sophistication to an otherwise unassuming piece of furniture.
Fisher’s work has been sometimes compared to that of the Shakers because of its simplicity and conscious restraint. While the overall association stands, it is significant to point out that the primary difference between Fisher and the Shakers is their view of ornamentation. While classic Shaker work has little to no moulding, Fisher relished elaborate profiles. The cornice of this desk (as well as that of his wardrobe) sat like a crown over Fisher as he studied. His artistic vision of furniture design, though similar to the Shakers’ in its modesty, was less inhibited. Even as a young child, his mother, Katherine, taught him to value artistic expression. Katherine, whose drawings look so much like her son’s, saw a world in which chastity and artistic beauty were not mutually exclusive. Fisher was not afraid of flourish.
The cornice on the desk and bookcase sets it apart from Shaker work.
His work fits much more squarely in the Federal vernacular classification than that of the Shakers. The desk carcase is interesting in that it is constructed like a six-board chest, with the sides extending to the floor with bootjack feet. The dados are a scant 3⁄4″ wide, matching his surviving dado plane. The backboards are unplaned, rough-sawn boards nailed into rabbets in the sides. The drawers (with the exception of the bottom one, which is a replacement) are of conventional dovetail construction – half-blind dovetails at the front, and through-dovetails at the back. The drawers’ bottoms are beveled and fitted into grooves in the sides and front, and are nailed to the drawer backs.
The lock is made of wood, with the exception of the metal pins. This is exactly the kind of detail work Fisher seemed to enjoy.
The overall composition of this piece illustrates the minister’s education. Even this simple desk was designed with classical proportions from his architectural training. Fisher’s fluency in this geometric layout is obvious from his college geometry notebooks in the archives. These notebooks are full of compass exercises to lay out complex patterns. Designing a desk was easy compared to the drawings he usually did. This “artisan’s design language” (as George Walker has called it) must have been intuitive in Fisher’s cosmos of order and mathematical rationality.
Rather than rely on measurements from a ruler, Fisher relied on simple whole-number proportions used in classical architecture.
The panels in the doors are interesting in their irregularity. Their flat sides face out in the Federal style and are beveled only where needed on the inside. The insides of the panels have heavy scalloping from the fore plane, even leaving behind evidence of a nick in the iron of the plane. This tendency to continue to use a nicked iron without regrinding the bevel is consistent throughout his work and concurs with the notion of pre-industrial indifference toward secondary surface condition. For the bottom two panels, he seems to have run short on material because the panels are only barely as thick as the 5⁄16″ groove and, even at that, both retain minor, rough-sawn texture. It appears he was scraping the bottom of the barrel to get those doors finished.
Willard wrote his name all over the house. His father’s bookcase door was no exception.
The insides of the doors have several inscriptions. “Willard” is written in red ink on one door, and “Josiah F” on the other. There are also compass-scribed circles on the inside of both doors whose randomness appears to have no significance beyond doodling. Even more perplexing, however, is the recording of “1 gallon of vinegar” on the inside of the door. This pattern of documenting purchases (and then crossing them off when paid) as well as notable life events is seen in several other pieces throughout the house. Jonathan seemed to have started the habit but Willard definitely took it far beyond his father. Willard’s name, agricultural notes and weather reports appear all over the house and his son, Fred, seems to have continued the tradition.
We receive almost-weekly requests for a current inventory of my tool chest. Usually, I am too swamped with work to take a complete inventory. Luckily, I had a couple days of downtime last week and took the opportunity to clean out my chest and take stock.
Not much has changed in terms of the chest’s structure since the publication of “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” in 2011. I have nailed in a few dividers in order to corral small tools – plus I added a couple tool racks. But that’s about it. The chest continues to age gracefully, and I am just as grateful for it as I was the day I finished it in December 2010.
The tools have changed a bit as I now make more chairs for sale. In 2010, I was making only three or four chairs per year. This year I made almost 20.
This inventory is arranged first by location (the top till, middle till etc.). Then tools in that location are grouped by function (measuring, bashing, reaming, poking, slaying).
My tool chest on Dec. 28, 2022, during the inventory.
I hope this inventory is useful in some small way. I know there will be questions about why I own “particular tool A” instead of “particular tool B.” There are a handful answers to those questions. Let’s get them out of the way.
This is a tool I have had for decades. There might be better/newer ones out there, but I am happy with this one.
This tool was made by someone I have a strong connection to or someone I admire.
We make this tool. Of course I like it.
I have no clue why I own this tool.
It is the ideal tool for the kind of things I build.
The communal tool wall.
My waist apron.
And I know some of you will ask: Why don’t you have a compass or pinch rods or….in your chest? The answer is likely that those tools are hanging on our communal tool wall or in my shop apron (both pictured above). The tool wall is used by me, Megan, instructors and students. In other words, I couldn’t just lock up this chest and sail to the New World to set up shop. I’d need to first throw in a few other tools. But I promise they would fit (along with my underwear).
Let’s start the inventory with the top sliding till of my chest.
The Top Till
These tools have risen to the top of the chest because I use them many times a day. Think about it: A combination square wallowing at the bottom of a chest like a catfish will just slow you down. This till also gets the dirtiest and has suffered more wear than the others. Because of the wear, I added slick plastic “drawer tape” to the sides of the till to keep it from racking.
Marking & Flesh-digging Tools
The right-hand divider contains all my mechanical pencils, my half-pencils (everyone needs them) and my “unturned pencil” for marking out rough cuts. Plus artist’s gum erasers, my M+R pencil sharpener and a Blue Spruce marking knife with a broken finial. The knife is a personal thing. An Arkansas doctor sent me the knife, which is made from a wild burl that one of his patients had dug up. The patient, a long-time reader, asked the doctor to send me the knife before the reader died. I couldn’t say “no” to that. Finally, there are my Tweezerman tweezers, which are fantastic for digging out splinters.
Cutting Tools
I was surprised at how few cutting tools are in the top till. The Ernest Wright scissors are from Sheffield, England, and are of insane quality (thank you, Matt!). The Kershaw pocket knife is inexpensive, made in the USA and damn-near unbreakable. Crucible Curved Card Scrapers – because they are the best (my boss made me write that). A collection of small drill bits in a handy case that I use constantly (get one from Rockler here). My Lie-Nielsen 60-1/2 block plane, because it is the best. And a small flush-cut saw from Lee Valley (choose “single-edge saw” on the drop-down to buy this one).
Beating & Scrubbing Tools
I know, it’s an odd grouping of tools. But here we are. The small hammer (11 oz.) is a no-name hammer that I use for driving pins and adjusting planes (yes, I hit only the metal bits with this hammer). The bigger hammer is a 16 oz. Plumb with an octagonal handle. After trying to reproduce my magical favorite nail hammer, we concluded that we couldn’t beat the old Plumbs in price or value. Get one. Plumb made millions of these suckers.
My 16 oz. Blue Spruce mallet is a long-term survivor. I chop dovetails and hinge mortises with the help of this guy. The polissoir is made by Cate Richards (I love the pink). The Lie-Nielsen brush is an essential and personal favorite for getting shavings and dust out of the mouths of planes. And the fingernail brush is used to clean the teeth of my rasps.
Oh, about the orange gaffer’s tape. I put that on tools that tend to wander during classes. Thanks to the tape, I can spot my tools across the room.
Measuring & Marking Tools
At top is my Starrett 12″ combination square, a faithful companion since 1997. Below that is a Chris Vesper try square, which is the ultimate arbiter of 90° in the shop. Worth every penny. A Starrett 24″ rule fits into the combination square and helps with big layouts. The Crucible brass center square is indispensable for chair work. Yes it marks centers on the ends of sticks. But it also allows you to mark radial lines on curved surfaces. The Crucible dovetail template is a natural fit for my work. The Vesper double square (based on old diemakers’ squares) gets inside joints to check their surfaces.
Below that are two Crucible Sliding Bevels and a larger Vesper Sliding Bevel. Sliding bevels are in constant use. I want good ones that hold their settings in a shop environment. Finally, a beloved Shinwa 12″ rule. Nothing special but immensely readable and useful.
Till Two
This till holds chairmaking tools, plus a bunch of bits, punches and other small items. These are tools I use almost as much as my top-till tools. But it has sort of a “junk drawer” feel at times (such as today).
So Many Bits
At some point in my career, I decided I didn’t want to be a two-bit woodworking celebrity. I wanted to be a 142-bit woodworking celebrity. Hence, this photo. Having all this hex-shank tooling has saved my butt many times. Some of these are ground gunsmith bits. Some are cheap ones that fell into my hands and are great to loan out…. The nut drivers at top mostly get used for machinery maintenance. I once tried to epoxy all these bit holders together, but the epoxy flaked off like skin over a sunburn.
Chairmaking Tools
Here are some dedicated chairmaking tools. At top is a “dummy leg” for checking angles as I ream leg mortises. The three little dowel bits are what we call “Hinderpluggen.” We use them to assist in boring through-mortises in chair legs. And for knocking loose legs that have become stuck in chair seats.
Below that are three tapered reamers. There are three to help supply students during classes. Then a 5/8″ tapered tenon cutter, which has been beat to hell and back. The red line on it indicates the thickness of a typical chair seat. And the 5/8″ Wood Owl augers are used for leg mortises.
Miscellaneous Tools
At top is a hacking knife, made by Tom Latane, which splits small parts out for chairs, mostly short sticks and pegs. Below that is the Crucible Bevel Monkey, which is essential when describing chair angles in plans and books.
At bottom left is the Benchcrafted Skraper, a carbide scraper we use for terrible, horrible things I cannot say words about. And a Tooleypark scriber, perhaps the newest tool in the chest, which is used for scribing chair legs to length.
Punchy & Poky Tools
More “junk drawer” items that see a lot of use. The Starrett centerpunch is a constant companion for installing hardware. To the right of that are some of my “I can’t quite get there from here” stubby screwdrivers. Used mostly in emergencies.
There’s a paint can opener because we love paint in this shop. To the right of that is a Japanese cat’s paw, which helps pull headed nails. And a Japanese nail punch, which is so tough that it gets used for many unpleasant jobs in the nether regions (like the Skraper). Then we have a handful of punches. I modify these for different odd jobs, such as setting cut nails.
Below that are some extra compass points and my feeler gauges, for when I feel fancy like a machinist.
Shaves
My only two spokeshaves are from Veritas (I don’t have a spokeshave problem, unlike some chairmakers). Plus a chair devil from Eleanor Rose, which I adore for its functionality and gorgeousness. Oh, and some safety razors, which get bent to become tiny awesome micro-scrapers.
Till Three
Back in the beginning, this till was for bigger tools, such as a brace (now hanging on the wall as a communal tool) and an eggbeater drill (ditto) and auger bits (now in a tool roll). Today, this till is still for bigger tools, but mostly chairmaking stuff and all the grabby tools.
Chairmaking Tools II
At top is a scorp from blacksmith Lucian Avery, which is shaped perfectly for shallow seat saddles. Below that is a Tilt Box gizmo, which is used to “steal” angles from existing chairs or other furniture. Two travishers. The top one is a tight-radius travisher made by Allan Williams. I use it for the sharp transition at the rims of my seats. His travishers are stunning and work incredibly well. Below that is a travisher from Claire Minihan and Peter Galbert, back when they were making them together. I traded Pete a bunch of books for it and still adore it.
At bottom is a shop-made pencil gauge that is indispensable, especially for chairmaking. It works on flat edges, inside curves and outside curves. I wish we could make these for sale.
The Grabby Things
Most of these tools are obvious. The soft-jaw pliers are for compressing round tenons. The nail pullers are for … pulling nails. And the other tools are for their normal, listed-on-the-box uses.
Machinist Tools & Bits
The Wera tool set is an emergency kit for when things go wrong in the bench room. Or when we need to go fix something on the car or in the house. The Brown & Sharpe dial caliper checks tenon sizes, tolerances when inspecting Crucible products and other machinist-like things.
And the Snappy bits are for when we need to run-and-gun to build a screwed-together something.
Miscellaneous Tools
At top is a thin pry bar (an iron crow), which gets a lot of off-label use. Below that is the hi-viz orange tape for marking tools. A flexible protractor for doing weird angled stuff on curves. Then there’s a Veritas edge plane, an occasional life-saver. And a Lie-Nielsen small router plane, which was in the top till when I wrote “Campaign Furniture” because of all the hundreds of bits of hardware I had to install.
Name & Number Punches
The number punches stamp the year on my work. And they are used to identify parts in a complex glue-up. The other stamps are name stamps and shop stamps for a variety of purposes. Marking my work, tools and other objects that might walk. The three grey stamps are from Infinity Stamps, which does excellent work.
The Moulding Plane Corral
This area is like a little terrarium in the tool chest. It is a bit closed off from the rest of the chest because of the way the sliding tills interact with the tool racks. You have to slide all three tills all the way forward to get the moulding planes. Not a big deal, but it’s rare to go here unless you mean to. I used to have a lot more hollows and rounds. As I’ve gotten older I’ve settled into a few sizes and profiles that I like and use frequently in my work.
Do not take these tool choices as gospel for what you should own. My work varies wildly in style and period. Yours might not.
Straight Rabbet Plus Hollows & Rounds
The 7/8″ straight rabbet plane is from Clark & Williams (now Old Street Tool), which makes rabbets parallel to the grain of boards. These rabbets might be for joinery, or they might be to rough out the shape of a complex moulding.
I now have only two pairs of hollows and rounds in my chest. A pair of 7s and a pair of 9s. Both sets are by M.S. Bickford. Because I don’t make reproductions, I can usually press these two pairs into making what looks good. Also, my work is more on the vernacular side, so enormous stacks of crazy moulding isn’t my thing. I think that stuff is beautiful, but it’s not what I do.
Beading Planes
I do like to use beading planes on my casework. They produce a nice shadow line to separate a face frame from a door or drawer, for example. I have four of them, but I really only should have three. The 1/8″ beading plane is from Caleb James. There are two 3/16″ beaders. One from M.S. Bickford and one from Old Street. The 1/4″ beader is from Caleb James. If I had to own only one beader, it would be a 3/16″, which is a nice size.
Complex Moulders
I use a few profiles over and over again. Call it consistent or call it boring – I do it so that I have fewer tools to sharpen and care for. (I prefer woodworking over tool maintenance.) At top is an A. Mathieson & Son square ovolo. It was made in Glasgow, which is where the Scottish side of my family comes from (or so I’m told by my spit). Below that is a bigger square ovolo by Old Street Tool. Then a thumbnail moulding plane, which is ideal for the edges of lids and chest tops. It was made by what is now Old Street. I could make that moulding with a straight rabbet and a block plane, but this plane is just so sweet, I keep it around. Finally there’s an ogee plane by Caleb James.
Miter Plane
With all the leftover room from trimming back my hollows and rounds, I have room for a long-time companion, a Wayne Anderson miter plane. This plane was stolen at a Philadelphia tool show. But I got it back after the thief had to sell his tool collection after it was wrecked by Hurricane Sandy (karma is a bitch, sir). It’s a long story, and one that I am not allowed to fully tell. This plane is the first infill I owned, and I love it to bits. Works great, too.
The Central Well & Small Tool Racks
This is the largest space in the tool chest, but it contains the fewest number of tools. When I peek into other woodworker’s chests, this area is usually crammed with bench planes (two No. 5s? Is one for formal outings, Biffy?). While the well looks a bit spare, it has been even more empty in past years. I finally succumbed to a shooting board plane. It’s a luxury. But I have the room, and we use it every week.
Bench Planes
No surprises here. I’ve owned these three tools since before I built the chest. There are Lie-Nielsen’s Nos. 3 and 8. And a Stanley No. 5 (Type 11). The No. 3 has the standard frog, plus a Veritas PMV-11 plane iron (my NAFTA plane). The No. 5 is on its third iron. I now have a Lie-Nielsen A2 iron in it (I had to file open the plane’s mouth a bit to make this work). The No. 8 is stock.
Specialty Planes
I have a few other specialty planes packed away because I haven’t used them much (especially my plow and moving fillister; but that’s going to change shortly). Here are the three currently have in the central well: A Lie-Nielsen 073 shoulder plane (I have never needed an additional size than this one). A Lie-Nielsen closed-throat router plane. And a Lie-Nielsen dedicated shooting plane.
Tool Rack Chisels & Stuff
The rack right above the chest’s central well has some important specialty tools. The flush-cut saw, a tool holder from Mattias Fenner in Germany and a Veritas mortise gauge. Next to that we have the Ray Iles mortising chisel (1/4″) and a matching swan-neck chisel for de-crapifying the floors of mortises. Then there’s a massive and beloved Barr bench chisel, which is good for all sorts of nastiness. The steel is ungodly good. Then there’s a Lie-Nielsen 1″ chisel, which didn’t fit in the top rack, and a Lie-Nielsen dovetail chisel with a bog oak handle I turned.
Front Rack & Sawtill
This is a busy area of the tool chest as these tools are pulled out a dozen times a day. As a result, this area gets filthy, especially below the saws. There’s a lot to see.
Screwdrivers
First is a full set of Grace USA straight screwdrivers (why, pray tell, is the No. 6 driver such a weird size? Must be a gunsmith thing). These are the best drivers. Ground tips. Tough as nails. At bottom is an Element’ary driver, which accepts all the hex-shank bits. And it has a locking/magnetic collar. Highly recommended. There’s a Lie-Nielsen screwdriver for tightening split nuts. It’s modified it to work with all our backsaws. And finally a Perfect Handle screwdriver bought for a $1 – perhaps the best $1 I ever spent. It is indestructible. I wish I owned a whole set (no, not the garbage ones that Garrett Wade sells).
Slicing & Poking Tools
The two Tite-Mark gauges see continuous use. I cannot imagine working without them. Next to that are three pairs of vintage dividers and the Crucible dividers. These are used for laying out dovetails, chair spindles, executing olives and other tasks. The little awl was bought at a flea market in Maine (I think it was $3). I adore it. And a Mattias Fenner birdcage awl, the best one I’ve found (if you are awl-curious like me).
Bench Chisels
I’ll be honest: I don’t use all of these chisels. I could probably boil it down to three: the 1/4″, the 1/2″ and the 3/4″. But these guys grew up together and I’d hate to break up a family.
Backsaws
In the sawtill are my personal backsaws. I also have a few on the wall for communal use. Here we have the Lie-Nielsen tenon, carcase and dovetail saws, all with apple handles (a special trade that Tom Lie-Nielsen made for me). And an Eccentric Toolworks dovetail saw by Andrew Lunn – the best saw I’ve ever owned.
Panel Saws
Also in the sawtill are these two vintage panel saws. There’s a Disston D8 filed crosscut with 8 tpi. And a Spear and Jackson filed rip with 7 tpi. The handles are different colors so you can grab the one you need without thinking too much.
Frame Saws
I have a bowsaw packed away (I use a small band saw for big jobs now). But I still use the snot out of my Blue Spruce coping saw and my fretsaw from blacksmith Seth Gould.
Rasps
The rasps and files are tool rolls that stand to the side of the sawtill. Most of these are Auriou, with a couple oddballs thrown in (including a file that sneaked into this tool roll). The Auriou cabinet rasp is a 9 grain. The Auriou modeler’s rasp is grain 15. The Auriou rattail is 13 grain.
Files
I am surprised by how many files there are. They started collecting en masse when I wrote “Campaign Furniture” and I had to file a lot of brass hardware. Then we launched Crucible Tools, and files are helpful when making prototypes. And the needle files are essential for tool maintenance. Files don’t take up much space, so I have allowed them all to stay.
On the lid of my chest is our “Woodworker’s Pocket Book” in a handsome slipcase from Texas Heritage.
The Future
We receive regular messages asking what I would change about my tool chest if I built it today. The answer is: structurally, nothing. It is the right size. Built the strongest way. From an ideal wood (pine). Since building it, Megan Fitzpatrick and I have taught hundreds of others to build this chest, and we have come up with better ways to do some of the construction steps. Some of these are honestly good ideas. Others are simply more efficient ways to work when you have to build seven chests in a week.
We also get asked if I will ever update “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” to build it with a more current tool set. An update is not a priority. Perhaps some day when I run out of new book ideas I’ll revisit ATC. But every time I pick it up and read bits of it, I’m happy with it overall.
Yes, if I were a “guy on the internet” I would take umbrage with a few choices and rationales in the book. But all in all, the book holds up, and we recommend it to new woodworkers without reservation.
We also get messages thanking us for publishing this book. That ATC changed the way they look at tools, woodworking or rampant consumerism. To that, I say: Thank you. The book changed us, as well. After “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” was released in June 2011, it sold well enough that I didn’t have to get a job at Woodcraft or Rockler after leaving Popular Woodworking Magazine (which was my true plan B).
After I left the magazine, I felt the same thing was happening to my career that happens to many other woodworking editors when they quit or are fired. My phone stopped ringing. My email tapered off. People who I thought were friends turned out to be transactional turd birds.
But after this book was released, you were there. And you kept me from diminishing into obscurity by talking about this book. Recommending it to friends. And attending classes I taught.
Here’s what I knew about Caleb James before I interviewed him for this profile:
He makes hardwood spokeshaves that are handsome enough to qualify as sculpture, in addition to being a joy to use. The spokeshaves alone made Caleb worthy of a profile.
He makes Danish Modern chairs based on original designs by Hans Wegner, and those chairs are not just comfortable, but marvels of craftsmanship.
He is a devoted family man with a wife and two daughters.
He’s a clean-cut guy who dresses nicely.
He has a refreshingly down-to-earth take on woodworking, especially when it comes to making furniture and tools as a livelihood.
I had no idea that Caleb does all this while living with an auto-immune disorder, nor that he’d spent years making a good living by selling household appliances – never mind that he once dreamed of being a helicopter pilot and went a good way toward achieving that goal before life caused him to change course.
Caleb with his wife, Tracy, and daughters Claire (left) and Petra. (Photo: Kelsey Joy Hefner www.kelseyjoyphoto.com.)
We spoke by phone on a recent weekend. Caleb was working at home, at the end of a street 5 miles from downtown Greenville, S.C., where he and his family have lived for eight years. “All you see is woods at the back of the house,” he told me. There are deer, bears and wild turkeys just outside the back door. A deer was foraging in the woods about 40 yards away as we spoke.
Caleb’s father, Bill James (left), with his uncle, Steve James, in their military uniforms.
The South has always been Caleb’s region. He was born in 1981 in the Gulf Coast town of Ocean Springs, Miss., where his father, a Vietnam War veteran and a framing carpenter by trade, worked for a manufacturer of mobile homes. When Caleb was 5, his parents split up and he moved with his dad to northern Arkansas, which had originally been home to his father’s family. A few years later they moved to Branson, Mo. After that he lived in St. Louis, where his mother had moved to be near her sister and was attending night school through a community college program while supporting herself by waiting tables; following her training she became a legal secretary.
Caleb’s parents with Caleb (in his father’s lap) and his brother Abe.
That’s a lot of moving. By the time Caleb was in ninth grade, he’d attended 11 different schools and was living with extended family and friends while working for his aunt, who ran a roadside fruit stand. At 14 he dropped out of public school and did his best to keep learning while employed as a dishwasher and waiter. He took college courses in air conditioning and appliance repair work, and earned a GED certificate.
At 17 Caleb moved to Texas; his mother, aunt and two brothers were living outside of Houston. His brother ran a stucco business and invited him to work there; they worked in traditional stucco, as well as Drivit, a cladding system that resembles stucco while enhancing a building’s insulation. Working outside in south Texas weather was not a viable long-term gig for “a white kid out in the sun,” as Caleb puts it. “It wasn’t something I thought I would survive at for very long.” Even his hands got sunburned.
He took a job working for a guy who bought used appliances from Sears – the washers, stoves and refrigerators hauled away from homes where customers had replaced them with new ones. His boss sold the used appliances in Mexico. Caleb was in charge of loading the truck that headed south across the border. “We would stack them to the ceiling,” he laughs. “Needless to say, I was in the best shape of my life.” When his boss expanded into buying and selling appliances that were slightly blemished (“scratch and dents”), one of his fellow employees suggested they repair the damaged appliances and retail them locally rather than sell them wholesale. Caleb found he had an uncanny knack for repairing appliances and removing blemishes. Retail sales exploded. The company he worked for initially had three employees; within three years they had 30.
It was steady work that paid well. “I really didn’t think about much more than survival,” he says of that time. Even so, Caleb played a central role in the business and ended up making better money than he’d ever anticipated.
Caleb and Tracy with helicopter.
He wanted to go back to school and train to be a helicopter pilot. Because his father was a disabled veteran, Caleb could go to school under the G.I. Bill until he turned 26. The authorities approved him for the commercial helicopter pilot program, but the Veterans Administration “pulled the payment” shortly before he completed the private pilot portion of the training – he learned that they were legally permitted to do so by some fine print in the G.I. Bill. So he decided to build on his experience with kitchen appliances.
An Appliance Business of Their Own
In late 2003, at the age of 22, Caleb and his brother, Jeremiah, started a business selling blemished appliances of better quality, among them Gaggenau, Wolf, Thermador and Sub-Zero. They focused on kitchen appliances because kitchen remodeling was big business at the time; it was before the Great Recession, which devastated so much of the housing and remodeling market. “If you’ve got a built-in oven and it’s got a ding on the back side, it really makes no difference. We were a perfect option; if you were going to pay $1,000 for an oven, you could buy it from us [instead] for $500 – $600.”
Caleb and Tracy on their wedding day.
Caleb met his wife, Tracy, through their church community in Houston. Both are Jehovah’s Witnesses. Tracy is from the Canadian town of High Prairie in the province of Alberta. Coming from a family of avid travelers, she had set out on her own at 17 to visit friends in Texas. After she and Caleb met at a church service they stayed in touch; about a year and a half later, they were married. It was the only way they could continue their relationship, he notes – “I couldn’t move [to Canada], and she couldn’t move to the States.” They celebrated their 20th anniversary this past May.
“Maybe my first woodworking project for my home,” Caleb calls this. “A plywood box to put my stereo/DVD entertainment components on, circa 2006.”
In around 2006, Caleb bought a table saw at a yard sale so he could build stuff for their home – “You buy your first house, and then you start building furniture,” he says. Plywood was one of his go-to materials. “A turning point was making an end table,” he says. He made the top and aprons, “having really no idea of what I was doing,” then proudly showed the piece to a cabinetmaker friend. “The look on his face was, ‘Wow, this is terrible.’ At that point I realized I really didn’t know what I was doing. I just kind of piddled with woodworking.”
The following year an acquaintance called out of the blue to tell Caleb about a gentleman who was retiring. He wanted to sell his shop equipment and wondered whether Caleb and Jeremiah might be interested in reselling it. They went to take a look. Faced with a 5-horsepower Delta cabinet saw and dust collector going for $275 (for both), Caleb “quickly realized ‘here’s some equipment I want to keep for myself.’ I was always interested in woodworking.” At that point his training consisted of 7th-grade woodshop class, augmented by what he’d learned through exposure to his father’s carpentry work. He started reading books on the subject; specifically, he cites the series of books by Danish-American furniture maker Tage Frid. Rounding out the year, Tracy and Caleb had their first child, Claire, that December.
Caleb grew more and more interested in woodworking. He appreciated the solitude of the work, which he found therapeutic. He was drawn to Danish Modern design, and also experimented with Windsor chairs and tried steam-bending parts in the garage. People would tell him his work was nice and ask whether he made it to sell. “I don’t have time,” he’d respond. He was building furniture at night and on weekends. But when he started to think about leaving the appliance business he posted some work on Etsy. It sold. “Here I am working every day at my normal business,” he continues, “and I get to a point [where I] ask myself ‘what are you doing? Do you just want to work all the time?’” By the time the James’ second daughter, Petra, was born in May, 2011, Caleb had signed the papers to sell his stake in the appliance business to Jeremiah.
Transition to Professional Woodworking
Caleb’s first large orders were for beds. A contact in Houston who had recently taken over a historic hardware storefront in Rice Village wanted to add local handcrafted furniture to his already hard-to-find items. He was already selling his own line of paints that were free of volatile organic compounds, specialty rubber mattresses, and more, and was looking for a craftsman to represent; he figured that if people were spending $8,000 on a mattress, maybe they’d also spend $3,000 or $4,000 on a bed. In addition to building beds, Caleb continued to sell chairs on Etsy and took commissions through an architect in Charleston.
Tracy “is a go-go-go” person, Caleb says; she loves to learn new things and be involved with people. He, on the other hand, “would probably stay and work in my shop and never leave home unless I was forced to.” When they were living in Katy, a suburb of Houston, Tracy took a course in computer drafting and worked part-time as draftsperson for an electrical company. When Caleb and Jeremiah started the appliance business he convinced her to join them; she handled sales and logistics while Caleb ran the warehouse. He calls her “a perfect salesperson. She has a knack for it – probably because she’s genuine.” Her interest in interior design didn’t hurt, either; clients appreciated her enthusiasm and readiness to go beyond the minimum required when dealing with their projects. She grew into the role of sales manager and kept that up until they sold the business in 2011. Tracy continued to do electrical design part-time while Caleb switched to full-time woodworking in his shop at home.
Caleb has had an unnamed auto-immune disorder since his late teens. After the family moved to Greenville in 2013, he became extremely anemic and developed some other health problems. He had discovered he had celiac disease in 2008; other health challenges appeared to stem from this condition. It took about a year to figure out what was going on and get back on track. Caleb now takes many supplements because he doesn’t absorb nutrients adequately.
While he was having health problems he found himself unable to handle heavy materials – “I’d be worn out in 45 minutes,” he remembers. A few years earlier he’d taught himself to make side-escapement planes, appreciating that a purpose-designed handplane would work well for some of the coped joints he used in chairmaking. He learned a lot from a Lie-Nielsen Toolworks video of Larry Williams on making tools. “I would make a bunch of furniture for somebody, then spend a couple of days making hand tools.”
Side escapement panel-raising plane.
During this period, Tracy worked full-time for about 1-1/2 years. “I was Mister Mom,” he says. It’s one of his favorite jobs.
Handplanes were a product he could make with limited strength and energy, so he started making them, even though he had no idea whether anyone would buy them. As it happened, Peter Galbert, with whom he’d taken a class, called to say he was going to be a presenter at Woodworking in America (WIA) and asked whether Caleb might like to demonstrate turning techniques at his booth; he pointed out that it would also be a good opportunity to gauge interest in his planes.
Fore or Jack plane.
Thumbnail plane in pear.
Hard as it might be to imagine, Caleb was a total stranger to the larger woodworking world in 2013, so he calls attending WIA that year “kind of a new experience for me.” A Lee Valley Tools representative approached him with a colleague, Fred West, who was known for buying and collecting tools. Fred, says Caleb, was reputed to be the kind of person who, “if he liked what you did, would buy as much of your stuff as he could, to try to help you.” He placed an order for almost $5,000-worth of Caleb’s tools, which convinced Caleb that tool making could be a viable way to make a living. Deneb Puchalski of Lie-Nielsen Toolworks invited Caleb to join the company at events around the country, at no cost. “I was very flattered,” recalls Caleb, “and thought this was a great opportunity.” He got his shop in order. Fortunately, he had already brought in a store of beech for the work.
Not long after his introduction to the woodworking community at WIA, Caleb met Christopher Schwarz at another tool event, this one in Charleston. Chris had been blogging about Danish furniture and asked if he could blog about Caleb’s tools, adding, “You ought to write a book on Danish Modern furniture for me.” Caleb had been blogging about his Danish furniture for a couple of years by then; he suspects Chris may have seen his posts, which prompted the offer.
“I thought he must have been joking,” Caleb remembers. “The next day he mentioned it to me again, with ‘I’m not joking. I don’t make this kind of offer unless I’m serious.’”
“I chewed on that” for several years, says Caleb – not least because he was so busy making handplanes, thanks to a blog post Chris had written about a side bead plane that Caleb had started producing. That post resulted in orders for about 100 planes in 36 hours at WIA. “I really didn’t know what I was getting into,” he says. Although he had made dozens of planes, he’d only sold a small number of them before this avalanche of orders. He stopped taking more orders, unsure whether he’d be able to fill them all. As Caleb puts it, “I just wanted to make sure if this was a bad idea it didn’t get any worse!”
Luckily, things worked out. He made side escapement planes for about three years, building scarcely any furniture during that time. Then he turned to spokeshaves for a couple of years. “So I’ve spent as much time doing tools as furniture.” And he’s working on that book.
Training
Caleb attributes his proficiency in part to watching his father build things. His dad never felt any hesitation, he says; instead, his attitude was “If you need it…just build it yourself.”
“I’m very much an auto-didact,” he continues. “I have no problem reading about something, then thinking through it.” That said, he doesn’t consider himself self-taught; as he sees it, “I learned from books.”
He did take one class with Peter Galbert circa 2011, because he wanted to spend time with someone who was making a living from their craft. He wasn’t building chairs like Pete’s; he just wanted to see how Pete was making chairs for a living. Caleb told Pete he was building chairs of his own for a living, in response to which Pete “dropped a big stack of his plans on the bench” and gave Caleb permission to build as many of his designs as he might wish, and sell them – a generous offer that Caleb appreciated, even though he didn’t build any of Pete’s designs for sale. He had his own ideas.
Pete, in turn, had learned a lot from Curtis Buchanan. Curtis contacted Caleb after Pete told him Caleb was good at drawing. Curtis proposed a swap: Draw a chair for Curtis and take a class in payment. So Caleb took a two-week comb-back armchair class; that was the chair Curtis wanted him to draw. Caleb found he had to redo the drawing multiple times “because Curtis builds ‘by feeling’; you had to unpack what his design was” in order to draw it on paper. That process took him into drafting on the computer, which made edits easier. Caleb produced two sets of drawings: the comb-back armchair and a continuous armchair. When they came to a third drawing, he told Curtis that he wasn’t a professional draftsperson and they should find a professional. He and Curtis happened upon Jeff Lefkowitz after a few failed attempts with other professionals. Jeff was already doing the manuals for Brian Boggs chairs, he says, “and did a fantastic job going forward.”
On Woodworking
“I try to avoid a philosophy with my woodworking and just do it,” Caleb answers when I ask for his thoughts about the larger woodworking picture. “I’m very much a ‘do what works and make it fit the application’ person.” While some woodworkers say “OMG, I would never buy anything from Ikea,” he says “I can’t afford to make all my own furniture. Here’s this nice solid-wood pine bunk bed, which probably used fewer materials [anyway]. I could probably take it apart and ship it to someone else after my girls outgrow it.” On the other hand, when it comes to his own work, he makes every chair to the best of his abilities and charges a premium price, even if that’s an indulgence for him and his client. He finds more appeal in Frank Lloyd Wright’s idea that “‘the home will be consumed by the environment at some point.’ If it lasts the entire lifetime of one individual, great. If you can hand it on to someone else after a lifetime [of use], that’s even better.” Caleb thinks of himself as pragmatic.
“I really avoid the philosophical discussion of woodworking, especially in social media,” he continues. “It feels like a source of argument. Opinions in that environment often turn into dogma. And in the end, I don’t know that any of it matters. ‘That’s great,’” he says, as if talking with an acquaintance, “‘have a discussion with your buddy when you’re geeking out on it, and then just leave it there.’”
Someone recently asked how people reacted when he started showing more machines in Instagram posts about his work. “‘Did they react to you like when Bob Dylan started playing electric guitar?’” he recalls. “I laughed. Because I never try to present that all my woodworking is hand tool woodworking. It’s not. I’ve always used power tools to make my hand tools! It depends on your objective. My feeling is, every tool is equal. You use it for what it should be used for. Sometimes I’m working for therapeutic purposes. But then my objective might be to execute a design. And then there’s, ‘maybe my purpose is to make this piece at a price point that’s appropriate to my client and me.’ I just use the right tool for the job and don’t worry about the rest.”