Happy Fourth of July! Here is what is happening on the forum on this holiday weekend. Remember, if you have a question about our products, procedures in our books or anything related to Lost Art Press, the fastest way to get an answer is our forum. Check it out here.
Boarded Bookcase Done Joshua finished his bookcase (right) and has been kind enough to share. It looks great and has apparently been such a hit around the house that he might have to make some more…
Removing lacquer from brass Anyone know of a good way to remove lacquer from brass? As always, the less elbow grease required the better. (Some is expected though…)
Borate-treated lumber for workbench? Jonathan just moved to Hawaii and is looking for wood to build his workbench. It turns out that anything larger than a 2×4 is green treated. He is wondering if borate-treated lumber would work. Any thoughts?
Words of Advice? Have you ever had a project go so wrong that there is no way to salvage it? Daniel feels your pain and is looking for motivation. What keeps you going when you feel like hours have gone down the drain?
A Boarded Campaign Chest? The same Joshua of boarded bookcase fame (above) is making a chest of drawers and needs to do it as quickly as possible. In order to save time his solution is to rabbet and nail the sides and tops of each carcase box together. Will this work? What would you do?
Publisher’s note: I don’t think I’ve ever dealt with publishing a book that has a more tortured history that “Woodworking in Estonia.” First published during the Cold War, the book was translated to English in 1969 under unusual circumstances, and the author never receive a kopeck for his efforts. Our edition seeks to reconcile that disgrace. Ants Viires’ family will receive royalties from every book sold. The book is available for pre-order in our store here. The book should ship in August. Here is the second part of how the first translation was completed. The first part is here.
Translations for Food
Keeping up with the number of publications that were available to U.S.-based scientists and the time it took for full translations was becoming problematic. There were at least 28 academies of sciences and several thousand research institutes in the USSR. Russian-language translations had been given priority, but by 1959 the number of non-Russian abstracts and translations had to be expanded. More translations and the money to pay for them were needed. Enter the American Foreign Food Assistance Program and Public Law 480.
Public Law 480 (PL 480), otherwise known as the “Food for Freedom” program, was signed into law in 1954. The agricultural bounty of the United States was a foreign policy tool that was initially used to help countries recover after the war and keep domestic prices from falling. It was also a means of discouraging communism. Under PL 480, agricultural commodities could be sold to foreign governments for local currencies, donated for famine or emergency relief abroad, or used for emergency situations in the United States. After a country’s request for aid was approved, the U.S. firms providing agricultural goods were paid in U.S. dollars while the importing country paid for the aid in the local currency.
Currencies were paid to the U.S. Embassy in the receiving country. According to the United State Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry, under Title I of PL 480 foreign currencies accrued from the sale of agricultural commodities could be used among other things “for international educational exchange…for carrying out programs of U.S. government agencies…” Using the provisions of PL 480 the NSF could set up contracts for translation services in countries receiving U.S. agricultural goods and the services were paid for with the local currencies accruing at the U.S. Embassies. In 1959 the NSF signed its first translation contract with the Israel Program for Scientific Translations (IPST).
IPST was formed by the Israeli government and employed multi-lingual scientists to translate books and other Soviet-bloc publications in chemistry, physics, medicine, biology, mathematics and other fields. Many of the scientists received their education partly in the Soviet Union and partly in English-speaking countries. The 150 or so translators were scientists from the faculties of Hebrew University, the Israeli Institute of Technology and research staff of other institutes. By 1964 IPST had translated 330 books and 800 articles totaling 110,000 pages. The translated publications were printed in Jerusalem and available in the United States through the Office of Technical Services of the U.S. Department of Commerce. Complimentary copies of the English editions were sent to the origin countries in the Soviet Union, and IPST also sold editions to 60 other countries. In 1960 similar translation contracts were signed with groups in Poland and Yugoslavia.
In 1960, Viires’ doctoral thesis “Eesti rahvapärane puutööndus: ajalooline ülevaade” was published by the Estonian Academy of Sciences. The full publication of a thesis was exceptional in the Soviet Union. Abstracts and articles summarizing the thesis were required by the author and printed in limited numbers but were rarely available abroad. It seems despite his “undesirable background,” Viires’ work was deemed too important not to be published in full. However, for this type of publication no royalties were paid. In the April 1961 edition of the “East European Accessions List” of the Library of Congress, Viires’ monograph was listed for the first time.
Through listings in several U.S. government publications, a request for a cover-to-cover translation, the translation of select journal articles, or an abstract could be made. The NSF coordinated the requests with various agencies including the Atomic Energy Commission, the National Library of Medicine, NASA, the Smithsonian Institution and the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce and the Interior. Lists of available translated material (with prices) was published regularly. Copies of translated publications were also deposited at the Library of Congress and several major university libraries.
In the case of “Woodworking in Estonia,” the Smithsonian requested the translation from Estonian to English. Translations by the IPST followed a four-part process with reviews by the editorial staff, science-area specialists and English-language stylists who were immigrants from the United States, South Africa and Britain. The first listing showing the translation was underway was in the CIA’s “Consolidated Translation Survey” of January 1968. It was listed under USSR-Economics as “Estonian Wood Carving Industry.” Once the translation was completed it was listed in the same CIA publication one year later under Scientific-Miscellaneous as “Woodworking in Estonia.” The U.S. Department of Commerce, responsible for sales and distribution, provided a full description of the newly translated book in the “U.S. Government Research & Development Reports” of April 1969.
“Woodworking in Estonia: Historical Survey” was described as “Wood, material forming. Culture, USSR. Rural areas, Trees, Small tools, Containers, Bending, Joining, Anthropology, Economics.” Identifiers were: “Social anthropology, Estonia, Woodworking, Turning (Woodworking), Handicrafts, Furniture.” As was the usual practice for an author in a Soviet-controlled country, Viires did not know his Estonian-language monograph had been listed in a U.S. government publication, selected for translation into English, translated by the IPST and made available for sale in the United States. He received four copies of his translated work, but no royalties.
Late in Estonia’s pre-1940 independence period, copyright laws based on the German model had been drafted but were not enacted prior to the Soviet occupation. During the occupation Estonia was subject to the copyright regulations in the Soviet Civil Codes. The Soviet Union was not a member of any international copyright convention until 1973. Prior to this, a work was copyrighted from the moment of creation, not publication, registration was automatic and royalties were determined by state-regulated schedules. In the spirit of “the work of one should be for the benefit of all,” creative output was essentially owned by the state. Large portions of a published work could be used without the author’s consent and using the work of another was not considered a theft of intellectual property. The first Soviet copyright laws were in place in 1925, with changes in 1928 and 1961, and each Soviet republic was required to be in compliance. Adding to the lack of an author’s rights was the provision for “freedom to translate.” This was a holdover from Tsarist laws that allowed a work in Russian to be translated and published in the minority languages of the country without the original author’s consent. The state could forcibly nationalize any work and also held a monopoly over the printing and publishing industries. The “freedom to translate” provision was not abolished until the Soviet Union joined the Geneva version of the Universal Copyright Convention (UCC) in May 1973. Joining the Geneva version was chosen to avoid the implementation of the Paris accords of the UCC, which gave authors stronger rights over their work.
By 1969 Viires had been studying Estonian language and culture for 32 years. For 29 of those years the Soviets, the Nazis and again the Soviets were determined to wipe out Estonian identity, language and culture while Viires, working in the constricts of an occupied country, was just as determined to document and preserve those same things. According to his family members, Viires was surprised but pleased his work was translated into English and he added the translation to his bibliography. As Liina Viires, Ants’ daughter, explained, to have one’s work translated and published abroad was a good thing. Under the Soviets travel abroad and receiving foreign guests was severely limited and even large areas of Estonia were off-limits. Even though authors in the Soviet era had little control over their work, the opportunity to have one’s work published abroad was a validation and it might open up the possibility, however slight, to communication with one’s peers in other countries.
The publication of Ants Viires’ doctoral thesis was exceptional in the Soviet system. In the 1960s someone at the Smithsonian saw in Viires’ monograph the potential for a valuable addition to the history of woodworking and folk handicraft, and requested a full translation. Although the translation was done without the knowledge or permission of the author, it brought this unique record to the attention of American woodworkers and eventually led to the authorized English translation you are holding today.
Publisher’s note: Ever since being charmed by “Woodworking in Estonia,” I’ve been curious about how and why it was first translated into English in 1969. Fellow woodworkers have shared strange theories about the translation with me that involve the U.S. State Department, the Israeli government and covert Cold War cash. After my years as a journalist, I suspected the story was more mundane, so I asked researcher Suzanne Ellison to dig into the public records available about the book and interview surviving members of the author’s family in Estonia. This is part one of her report.
— Christopher Schwarz, publisher, Lost Art Press
Ants Viires with a brush scythe in 1947, Photo by Veera Puchs. Used with permission.
In 1960 a monograph on woodworking is published in the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic. Within months the book is listed in U.S. government publications. Several years later the book is being translated in Israel and is listed in a CIA publication. Shades of John le Carré? “Tinker Tailor Soldier Ethnographer?”
During World War II, tremendous advances were made in science and technology. Long-range rockets, guided missiles and atomic weapons were developed, resulting in an arms race after the war. Western governments and the Soviet Union vied to increase their spheres of influence. For the post-war civilian population, such scientific advances were a cause of fear and anxiety. An American child attending school in the 1950s and into the early 1960s will remember the air raid drills. They were taught to “duck and cover” under desks or were crowded into school basements with shelves of canned goods lining the walls. Before being stationed at military bases in Western Europe, the children of members of the U.S. Armed Forces were issued dog tags in case of separation from the family.
The Great Information Race One of the United States’ concerns was the perceived gap in science and engineering education and research compared to that of the Soviet Union. A greater need for science education and funding led to the creation of the National Science Foundation (NSF) in 1950. One of the first initiatives undertaken by the NSF was to create a directory of U.S. scientists, their education, fields of research, location and expertise in foreign languages. Comparisons were made to the known numbers and fields of expertise of scientists in the Soviet Union. The U.S. directory of who was where and what they were doing would also be useful in the event of “mobilization” (i.e. war). In a March 1956 report of the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy to the U.S. Senate, the situation was characterized as “in desperate danger of falling behind the Soviet world in a critical field of competition – the life-and-death field of competition in the education and training of adequate numbers of scientists, engineers and technicians.” Another problem was how to keep track of the massive amounts of domestic and foreign scientific and technological literature being generated and how to guarantee easy access to it.
Then, in October 1957, the Soviets launched Sputnik I, creating a space race and deepening the arms race. The capability to put a satellite in orbit also meant an intercontinental nuclear weapon was a possibility. The push to improve science education and expand research became more intense. The National Defense Education Act was passed, and the NSF saw its funding tripled. Improved access to scientific literature, both domestic and foreign, became urgent. In the preface to a report by the Quartermaster Research & Engineering Command (January 1959, revised March 1960) it was noted, “It is realized now that if the United States had translated available information from Russian publications there would have been no surprise at the first Sputnik launching. Information on Soviet earth satellite plans had been published a year before the launching in October 1957.”
Since World War II the Library of Congress had been collecting Soviet publications to translate them, and similar efforts were underway in other government agencies, universities and private industry. The NSF was tasked with increasing the collection of foreign language scientific literature and improving the communication of the available literature. The NSF Annual Report for Fiscal Year 1957 put it this way: “All the foreign scientific publications which a United States scientist may need should be readily available to him…regardless of the language or nation in which the publication first appeared….The availability of translated, as well as the foreign publications not translated, should be called to the attention of scientists through publication of English abstracts, a translation collection, announcements….”
The need for access to, and exchange of, scientific literature from the countries behind the Iron Curtain went beyond the arms race. In any scientific or technological field of research it is vital to know about related research, controls used, reproduction of results and both failures and successes. Exchanging research and advances in medicine and knowledge gained in the sciences was of great benefit for all participants. And if one happened to come across a clue to a new satellite launch, that certainly didn’t hurt.
Ants Viires & His Research Ants Viires was born in Tartu, Estonia, in December 1918. In 1937 he was admitted to the University of Tartu with a focus on language studies. Within three years Estonia was caught in a brutal back-and-forth between the Soviets and Nazi Germany. The Soviets took over in 1944, and Estonia was made a Soviet Socialist Republic and would remain so until 1991.
In the 1940s Viires shifted his studies to ethnography and began to work at the Estonian National Museum; he graduated from the University of Tartu in 1945. At the same time institutions in Estonia were being brought in line to espouse Soviet ideology. Museums and universities became State, as opposed to National, institutions. Researchers were tasked with relating Estonian heritage and culture to that of Russia. Estonian researchers fled to other countries and some were purged by the Soviets. Those remaining in the country were required to be “retrained.” The Soviets labeled the Estonia National Museum a “nest of bourgeois nationalists.”
Viires left the museum in 1946 to pursue post-graduate studies. From 1949 to 1956 he did not work in his field of expertise because his compulsory work for the German military during World War II was used against him. He worked in a clerical position in a factory in Elva and later as an English and German teacher in a small school in Saku. In his free time Viires continued his ethnography studies and wrote his doctoral thesis. He earned his Ph.D. in 1955 and his thesis is what we now know as the (unauthorized) 1969 edition of “Woodworking in Estonia.”
In 1956, as a result of the “Khrushchev Thaw,” the Soviet Union loosened control of scientific and technological publications, easing the flow of information to the West. As a result, three things happened: the Library of Congress increased its exchange agreements with Soviet libraries, Soviet scientific journals could be readily obtained by subscription, and U.S.-based dealers could order books through the state book export monopoly Mezhdunarodnaha Kniga. To keep up with the tremendous number of Russian-language journals, the NSF gave grants to domestic translation and abstracting services. Materials translated by Western European groups were also available.
Viires was able to work again in his field of expertise when he joined the Tallinn Institute of History in 1956. In the July 1957 issue of “East European Accessions List” of the Library of Congress, a journal article by Viires is listed for the first time. Another journal article is listed in the accessions list in 1958.
— Suzanne Ellison
Coming in Part 2: How “Woodworking in Estonia” was part of a program translating documents in exchange for food. You can pre-order this book in our store for $29.
It was circa 1870 when a European elm tree was intentionally planted in a quiet southwestern corner of Prospect Park in Brooklyn. It was late 2015 when the tree was declared dead and cut down.
This tree is one of the few things in NYC that had remained unchanged for that century and a half. Think about it. When planted, dirt roads, horses and farmland surrounded it. By the end of its life, it neighbored a gas station taking credit card transactions and nearly every person walking around it had a smart phone in their pocket.
Andrew Ullman, Brooklyn’s Director of Forestry, was the one tasked with making the decision to fell the tree after it had become a danger to park visitors. “18 and 24 inch limbs [had] been broken off in the hurricanes and tornados,” Ullman says. Upon interviewing Andrew, I had all but forgotten that tornadoes had recently touched down in NYC. I recalled a few years ago when I was riding my bike down Dekalb Avenue in Bed-Stuy and saw every tree in a two-block area decimated by a twister.
It was also Andrew who encouraged the Park Service to seek out RE-CO BKLYN to mill and dry lumber from the tree instead of chipping it to be sent to a landfill. We will then go on to build a custom conference table for the NYC Parks Prospect Park offices in Litchfield Villa with lumber from the tree. Andrew closes the interview with, “The worst thing we could be doing is just throwing this stuff in a landfill. One of the best things [ . . . ] we can do with it is mill it into timber and [ . . . ] build lasting products out of it.” Hearing this type of progressive thinking come from the NYC Parks Department is a major step in the right direction. We are passionate about keeping as many NYC trees out of the chipper as possible and especially focused on NYC Park trees because of the personal connection that the public has with the trees.
The process of felling the tree, breaking it down and transporting it to our facility took months of planning. A crane was used to help fell the tree, then two log trucks with cranes and a large loader worked together to get the logs onto multiple trucks. We rented a 60,000 lb. excavator to offload them upon arrival in our yard. When we first started RE-CO BKLYN, we were moving logs around with 2×4s and milling them with a chainsaw on the sidewalk. We could never have anticipated this.
This business is a constant surprise, so we’ll keep moving forward, anticipating the next adventure around the corner.
My daughter’s bench. This French-style workbench has yet to fail me. It is sturdy, heavy and easily holds boards when working their faces, edges and ends.
Workbench I have written two books on workbenches that agonize over the details of joinery, wood selection, vises and so on. But if you don’t want to buy those books, here is the down-and-dirty data you need to pick a bench design.
Note: Before you write me an angry letter about this list – you don’t have to have a good bench to be a good woodworker. You can work on the kitchen table and make world-class work. But a good bench will make many operations easier. It’s simply a tool: the biggest clamp in the shop.
Rule No. 1: Always Add Mass
For workbenches, here’s my maxim: If it looks stout, then make it doubly so. Everything about a workbench takes punishment that is akin to a kitchen chair in a house full of 8-year-old boys.
Early Roman workbenches were built like a Windsor chair. Stout legs were tenoned into a massive top and wedged in place. Traditional French workbenches had massive tops (up to 6″ thick), with legs that were big enough to be called tree trunks. Later workbenches relied more on engineering than mass. The classic Continental-style workbench uses a trestle design and dovetails in the aprons and vises to create a bench for the ages. The 19th-century English workbench uses an early torsion-box design to create a stable place to work. And good-quality modern workbenches use threaded rods and bolts to tighten up a design that lacks mass.
Many inexpensive commercial benches are ridiculously rickety. They sway and rack under hand pressure. You can push them across your shop by performing simple operations: routing, sawing, planing. If the bench looks delicate or its components are sized like a modern dining table, I would take a closer look before committing.
A big thick top and stout legs add mass that will help your work. Heavy cabinet saws with lots of cast iron tend to run smoother than plastic ones. The same goes with benches. Once your bench hits about 300 pounds, it won’t move unless you want it to move.
Permanent. The sliding dovetail and through-tenon on this French bench makes a bench where the base and top act as one.
Rule No. 2: Use Stout Joints Overbuild your workbench by using the best joints. These are times to whip out the through-tenon and dovetail. If you followed rule No. 1, then rule No. 2 should be no problem. Your joints will be sized to fit the massive scale of your components. If you cannot rely on mass, then you should beef things up with superior joinery. While dovetails and through-tenons are overkill for a towel rack, they are de rigueur for a bench.
That’s because you are applying wracking force to the workbench with typical operations and your vises will do their best to tear apart your bench. All wooden vises need to be overbuilt or they will self-destruct when you cinch them down hard. I’ve even seen a vise rip a benchtop from its base.
Make your tenons thick and your mortises deep. If you know how to drawbore a mortise-and-tenon joint, this is one good application. Have you ever been in a timber-framed barn? Did you look at the joints? They’re massive and pegged. Imitate that.
I think benches are a good place to practice your skills at cutting these classic joints, but some woodworkers still resist. If that’s you, you should investigate hardware to strengthen your bench. Threaded rods, bed bolts, special bench bolts or even stove bolts can turn a spindly assembly into something rigid that can be snugged up if it loosens. The hardware won’t give you mass, but it will strengthen a rickety assembly.
Happy Fourth of July! Here is what is happening on the forum on this holiday weekend. Remember, if you have a question about our products, procedures in our books or anything related to Lost Art Press, the fastest way to get an answer is our forum. Check it out here.
