Though I’ve shopped at Frank Paxton lumber for almost 20 years, I’ve never been asked the following question. Until today.
“I’ve got to ask,” the clerk said. “What the heck are you building with this wood?”
Since starting work on the “Furniture of Necessity” book, my lumber purchases have gotten a little weird. Instead of combing through the racks of 4/4 and 5/4 boards, I simply ask: “What’s the thickest and widest stuff you have back there?”
The answers have been surprising and illuminating.
I’ve found that many professional lumberyards stock surprisingly thick stock for custom home builders – I’ve been buying lots of 4”-thick poplar. Another great source of thick material has come from asking about the stock that local builders purchase for fireplace mantles.
Today I picked up a 12/4 board of white oak destined for fireplace mantles that was 20” wide, 9’ long and $2.67 a board foot. It was dressed on two faces (whew), and it surprisingly wasn’t the biggest sucker in the pile.
This will become the top to a portable table from the “Tacuinum Sanitatis” that illustrates how drunkenness can get out of hand. I think the image looks like a frat party because of the red Solo cups.
The table will have five or six legs and a thick, round top. Like my other pieces from the 15th century, this one will be as portable as possible. The legs can be knocked home and removed with a mallet (or wine bottle). To get your party started all you have to do is roll the tabletop into the woods, drive the legs into their conical mortises and flip the whole thing over.
Signed, limited-edition art prints of the image above will be for sale at the Studley Tool Cabinet & Workbench Exhibit in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on May 15-17. Come by and say hi, get a book signed, buy a print and, oh yeah, go see this tool cabinet and workbench everyone keeps talking about.
I refer to this image endearingly as the ensemble’s “yearbook” photo – it’s one of a few photographs I took that contains the entire tool cabinet and workbench, and I think it’s a fitting keepsake for a truly special viewing experience of the full Studley Ensemble. An image like this one appears across the title spread of Virtuoso, but the book features the empty tool cabinet and a cropped workbench base.
The prints measure 24″ by 24″ (the image is 20″ x 17″) and are printed with archival inks on Hahnemuhle Photo Rag 308, a very thick matte art paper whose silky-smooth, reflective-free surface yields prints with outstanding depth, detail and character. They will come packaged in clear archival bags and will cost $100, payable by credit card or cash.
This art print edition will be limited to 100 prints, each one signed and numbered in pencil by me. I’m hoping to bring all 100 prints to Cedar Rapids (production time might be an issue), but given the pre-release interest in Virtuoso, Handworks,and the H.O. Studley exhibit, I’m fairly certain the prints I bring will sell out, making this poster an event exclusive. The prints will be available on a first-come, first-serve basis, though I will ensure that some are reserved to be sold on Saturday afternoon for those of you who won’t be in the area until the weekend.
I know many of you are interested in prints of images from Virtuoso, and you’ll be happy to know that I intend to offer prints of other images from the Virtuoso photo archive at future woodworking events (such as WIA). But for the time being, prints will not be offered for sale online anywhere – I won’t quit my day job to become a poster-making factory, and I prefer the kind of care and quality control I can exercise in these small-batch production runs. There’s already a made-for-the-masses poster for sale and, for what it’s worth, I have one myself.
Speaking of care and quality control, I’m still tweaking and proofing the image; I’ll post a photo or two on Instagram or on the LAP blog when production is in full swing.
For me, failure is like the first-person accounts I’ve heard from people who were saved from drowning or freezing to death.
You struggle mightily. At some point, however, you stop and are gripped by calm or warmth.
For the last two days, I have been fighting after being handcuffed, stuffed into a garbage bag and thrown into an icy reservoir. At 8:30 a.m., however, I put my hammer down. I wiped down my edges with a rag and put my tools back into my chest.
When I finish this blog entry, I will dismantle the parts and return them to my wood rack. The nails will go back to the cabinet.
Like many failed projects, I could have completed this box, and it would have been perfectly usable. I know woodworkers who keep their failures as a reminder of a hard lesson, but that’s not me. If I cannot sign my name to a piece and deliver it to a customer, it won’t leave my shop.
(That’s not entirely true. These parts will get used for something else. Perhaps they’ll become drawer sides or a picture frame.)
More important than the fate of the wood is that I know exactly why I failed (so there’s no need to explain it to me in the comments). And I know how to begin again.
Mark Firley of The Furniture Record with Megan Fitzpatrick at a recent meal at The Eagle Food & Beer Hall.
I’m a Southerner, so please forgive the following hyperbole: If you want to become a better furniture maker you need to see a lot of furniture. Tons, really. You can do this by traveling the world, or you can read The Furniture Record, one of my favorite blogs.
The Furniture Record blog is the tip of the iceberg of Mark Firley’s photo collection on Flickr, a library of more than 11,000 images of furniture and its details that Mark has encountered with his camera. Because Mark lives in North Carolina, his photos have a Southern bias, but he also travels quite a bit so you are going to find pieces from all over the world.
A quick browsing of his blog or Flickr sets should convince you of two things:
The furniture record is far more diverse than what you’ll find in books or on auction sites.
Construction methods are not standard or absolute. People have found a wide variety of ingenious (that’s a kind word) ways to join wood. And oddball methods can survive remarkably well.
I’ve known Mark since I started teaching at Roy Underhill’s The Woodwright’s School in Pittsboro, N.C. Mark is a huge supporter of the school and the local woodworking scene in the Research Triangle, where he helps organize and has hosted weekly building session for woodworkers at his and other shops.
But that’s about all I know about him, except that his humor is as dry as a popcorn fart, he doesn’t drink alcohol and he has an unusual job working for Donald Trump. So recently we went out for dinner and I whipped out my reporter’s notebook and began quizzing him about his background. Megan Fitzpatrick, the editor of Popular Woodworking Magazine, was there as well and helped with the questions. That’s a good thing because Mark as a tendency to invent ridiculous stories.
So the following may or may not be true.
Firley was born in Jacksonville, Fla., but moved around a lot as a child as his father tried to find a better job in the insurance industry.
His family history is almost difficult to believe. His father served in the German military during World War II due to a series of remarkable events, Mark said. His grandparents were German nationals in the United States who had overstayed their visas and were deported back to Germany. His father, a U.S. citizen born in Glendale, Calif., was 3 when his parents were sent to Germany in 1930. He was drafted into the Nazi army at 16 in 1943.
After the war, Firley said his father’s citizenship was restored while he was still in Germany. He got a civil service position as a courier in Germany working for the Army of the Occupation and got “rotated” stateside when discharged GIs with greater seniority took his job. Shortly after his return to the states, he was drafted into the U.S. Army.
The story of his mother is even stranger and is beyond the typical word count of this blog. Let’s just say it involves a mental hospital and Mark running away and later being disowned.
An example of “through pocket-hole” joints, one of my favorites from The Furniture Record.
So after this typical American upbringing, Mark attended Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Penn., and studied physics. The money ran out during his freshman year, so Mark dropped out and got a job with the university’s computer science department as a technician.
“I liked making money more than school, so I never went back,” Firley said.
Despite his lack of a degree, Mark had no problems finding work in computer, technical and engineering fields. He worked in computer engineering, then as a sound designer and even built a lot of crates for a lighting rental company (one of his early exposures to building things using wood).
“I spent 14 years there as the interim vice president of engineering,” according to Firley. “I built the crates because I was neither a drinking man nor married, leaving my evenings free.”
While working with the lighting company, Mark ended up designing and running the computer voting systems for the Miss Universe pageant in 1979. And he continues doing that today for both Miss Universe and Miss USA pageants.
This job takes him all over the world, but it also leaves him with a lot of free time to explore antique markets, museums and auction houses.
After buying an vintage kit clavichord and wanting to fix it up, Mark decided to get serious about woodworking and began taking classes with Roy Underhill and elsewhere. And he began documenting the furniture he encountered on his travels and uploading it to Flickr.
For a long time he focused on documenting dovetails on pieces to show how dogma about the different slopes and skinny pins just simply wasn’t true. Then he became obsessed with pintle hinges. Then 100 other things.
A wicker casket from The Furniture Record.
Now his blog (and Flickr photostream) are full of all sorts of things, both high-style and vernacular.
“I like to look,” Mark said. “I am fascinated by pieces at antique stores because they are like an uncurated museum. And I like auctions – they are also uncurated, but the exhibit changes every week.
“But I do what amuses me – now that I don’t have the office in Bangalore.”
Um, sure.
— Christopher Schwarz
P.S. Last I heard, Firley was going to attend Handworks. Now that you know what he looks like, chat him up. It’s like talking to Bob Newhart (if he were a woodworker).
