Lost Art Press

The Naked Woodworker’s Mighty Hammer

Posted on by Lost Art Press

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Mike “The Naked Woodworker” Siemsen made mallets for 18 students in my upcoming “Hand Tool Immersion” class at the Marc Adams School of Woodworking. This low-cost class is aimed at beginning woodworkers with young families who have few tools, money for classes or free time to teach themselves the craft through trial-and-error.

The one-week class will be a deep dive into handwork for the students, who will go home with a tool chest, sharp tools, a bunch of new skills and probably some B.O. (we’re camping to save money).

Mike, who runs the Mike Siemsen School of Woodworking outside of Minneapolis, Minn., volunteered to make mallets for all the students. He did, and they are great.

I’m going to teach this class again in June 2016 – at Mike’s place. We plan to camp and cook on his land. I’ll post details about the class, the minimal costs and registration when they become available. Mike and I still have lots of little details to work out.

Thanks for the great mallets!

— Christopher Schwarz

Caleb James Taking Orders for Beading Planes

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Beading planes are the crack of the wooden moulding plane world. If you’ve had trouble finding a good beader, consider buying a new one from Caleb James or one of the other great makers.

Caleb has just opened orders for his next batch of beading planes in 3/16” and 1/4” sizes.

They are excellent. Details here.

— Christopher Schwarz

You Say Relaxation, I Say….

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The Flag Halyard Chair GE225 (1950)

“Even when (Hans) Wegner was vacationing at his summer cottage with his family and some friends, his mind never stopped working. One day at the beach, he dug a hollow in some sand to experiment with sitting positions and found one in which you could be reclining and yet still see your surroundings, thereby inventing a new way for a chair to hold someone. With the design of the Flag Halyard Chair, Wegner proved – just as he had with the three shell chair – that he could create something radically innovative with new materials. There is little of the cabinetmaker’s tradition in the chair, but there is plenty of handiwork for the person tasked with covering the chair in 250 meters of flag halyard.”

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“Kaare Klint said that it (The Flag Halyard) reminded him of a chair for a gynecological exam.”

— Both quotes are from “Wegner: Just One Good Chair” (Hatje Cantz) by Christian Holmsted Olesen

Sociable Settles

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“When you come to think of it, settles were the only form of traditional oak furniture that were not used for dining; they were for resting, conversing and drinking. As such, they were sociable, not hierarchical. Unlike other forms of seating, settles did not embody the social hierarchy in which great chairs were reserved for those of the highest rank, joint stools served for (almost) everyone else and forms were for the lowliest – servants children and women.”

— John Fiske, Antique Collecting magazine, September 2013, and “When Oak Was New: English Furniture and Daily Life 1530-1700.”

PS: Apologies for the diarrhea of posts today. I’m emptying a backlog of entries I wrote while I didn’t have consistent Internet access.