Lost Art Press

A Simple Kiln

Posted on by fitz
My kiln is just insulation board, duct tape, one light bulb in a reflector (120°F is all you need), and some sticks poked through the sides to elevate parts. There’s a meat thermometer poked through the top. The kiln sits on top of a milk crate; the light’s reflector hangs in a hole in the kiln’s bottom. JA’s had a dimmer switch – but why complicate things?

The following is excerpted from the third edition of “Make a Chair from a Tree” – a book Jennie Alexander somewhat reluctantly agreed to in 2014. In 1978, her seminal book on green woodworking launched the careers of thousands of woodworkers and helped ignite a green woodworking movement in this country. Her reluctance to a third edition wasn’t due to a lack of passion for the book’s subject – the simple but gorgeous object that we now call a Jennie Chair had been an obsession of hers for decades. She simply didn’t know if she was physically and mentally up to the task of essentially starting from scratch on a new book – she had learned so much since the first two editions were published that this is an almost entirely new book. Thus, “Make a Chair From a Tree: Third Edition” is the culmination of a lifetime’s work on post-and-rung chairs, covering in detail every step of the green-wood chairmaking process – from splitting and riving parts to making graceful cuts with a drawknife and spokeshave, to brace-and-bit boring for the solid joinery, to hickory-bark seat weaving.

With the help of Larry Barrett, one of her devoted students, she worked on this new version of the book until just weeks before her 2018 death. Larry polished Jennie’s final manuscript, then built a chair in Jennie’s shop using her techniques and tools as we took many of the photographs for this book. Nathaniel Krause (another of Jennie’s devoted students), wove the hickory seat for this book. Longtime friend and collaborator Peter Follansbee helped to edit the text into the intensely technical (but easy to understand) and personal (but not maudlin) words that ended up in this third edition.

We know Jennie would be delighted by the contributions from the people she taught and who, in turn, inspired her. (Though we also suspect she’d say we should just start rewriting the book at the beginning…. again.)

There is no kiln in the first edition of “Make a Chair from a Tree.” Notes indicate JA was striving to get the rungs drier at assembly than they would be in the life of the chair, what we later came to call “super-dry.” JA made notes on different techniques chairmakers she met used, including one who dried rungs on the tin roof in the summertime. One of the first kilns JA used was the wood-fired kiln probably developed by Drew Langsner, used in various configurations by Langsner, Alexander and Dave Sawyer in the early years of Country Workshops.

After using it in the first class in 1979 Alexander briefly described it in a letter to friends:

“We made a kiln from cinder blocks and roof tin and chicken wire. After burning up some test rungs (JA certified perfectos) we installed the clay floor and cut back the heat. Fired by scraps & tended every hour (day & night) it worked very well. Very little checking on the rungs.”

I was a student in JA’s second chairmaking class there (1980). The kiln figures in one of my stellar moments in that class. It was the “tended every hour (day & night)” part that got me. We set up a nighttime schedule for the tent-camping crowd of scruffy would-be chairmakers. An alarm clock was given to the first student who would go tend the fire in the night. Then this person would reset the clock to sound off in another hour and tuck it into the tent of the next person on the rotation. Brilliant me, I decided that I’d take one of the earlier shifts, then be able to get back to sleep for some uninterrupted rest until morning. Except I slept through the alarm. I remember waking up way after my allotted slot, huffing & puffing to get the fire up again, and then turning the clock over to the next person. Several students got a full night’s sleep when they weren’t expecting it.

Chairmaker’s kilns have come a long way since. Most are over my head, and because I only make a couple of chairs at a time, beyond my needs. The one I use is based on the kiln Alexander featured in the afterword to the 1994 edition of MACFAT. I forget who came up with it; there’s reference to it (and other kilns) in Langsner’s “The Chairmaker’s Workshop.” I’ve dried chair rungs on the dashboard of my car in the summertime. I don’t have a tin roof.

– Peter Follansbee

Anthe Update No. 5

Posted on by Lost Art Press
The first floor of the Anthe building on Saturday. The retail store is coming along. All the drywall is required by the county for fire suppression.

When you rehabilitate an old building, your plans have to change (almost daily) to keep things moving forward and to code.

The “code” part of the project is what has been driving us for the last few weeks. We want the building to look like it did when we bought it and was empty. But it also has to be safe and adhere to the county’s regulations if we ever want to occupy it.

This week, the fire-resistant drywall went in around the stairwell, and it was (honestly) a bit dispiriting. I know we are going to cover parts of the drywall with beadboard (some of it original), which will look better. But the drywall really changes the look of the place. And it made us re-evaluate how we are going to use the second floor of the building.

The second floor with the required drywall (the steel ceiling had to be pulled off for the drywall – not our call). The boxed-in stairwell shrinks the space for our offices. We will likely give this floor up to storage.

My hope all along has been to use the second floor as our editorial offices, with excess storage at the rear of the second floor

But after the walls went up to meet code and were covered in the first layer of drywall, it was obvious that the second floor isn’t ideal for offices. The fire-resistant walls interrupt the building’s front windows. And the resulting space (and all the mechanicals on the wall), made me rethink the space.

I think we are going to devote the entire second floor to storage. 

After some thought, this makes good sense. The second floor has a double door at the rear (right above our loading area). We can use our forklift to put pallets directly into the second floor from a delivery truck. No elevator necessary. 

The third floor is more spacious. Plus we don’t need to remove all of the ceiling. This will likely become our offices. I hope….

The third floor looks like our future editorial offices. The fire-rated drywall area is much smaller, so the space is more open. And we don’t have any plans for it yet. This allows us to grow with lots of storage on the second floor and offices on the third floor, with room for workbenches and all the other things in my head.

Despite all this faffing, we are getting close to occupancy. If our schedule holds, we will be able to move fulfillment operations to Anthe by the end of this month. 

It’s not all dispiriting. We have a new functioning awning on the front of the building, which looks fantastic and works. Our bathroom works and is to code (after moving a wall about 5/8″).

And this is my fourth rodeo with 19th-century building rehabs. I know it is always worth it in the end. I had a similar crisis with all of the other buildings we’ve rehabbed. We get through it. And it’s awesome.

Thanks for all of you who have helped fund the restoration. It has made a real difference.

— Christopher Schwarz

A Better Understanding of Red Oaks

Posted on by Lost Art Press
A stack of chair parts in Northern Red Oak.

I buy and process at least 900 board feet of red oak each year for chairmaking and chair classes. When chosen and cut with care, red oak can look much better than the ugly 1980s kitchen cabinets it is associated with.

But before you embrace this inexpensive and plentiful wood, here’s a quick lesson on what I look for at the lumberyard.

Most red oak in our area is from two different species: Northern red oak (Quercus rubra) and Southern red oak (Quercus falcata). These trees look nothing alike in the wild. Their leaves, bark and acorns are radically dissimilar. And the wood they produce looks different and works different. 

(We also get some Quercus velutina around here, which is also a red oak. But this particular red oak isn’t put with the other red oaks in our lumberyards. It gets its own bin that’s labeled black oak. To me it looks a lot like Northern red oak [Quercus rubra] at times. Boy, is wood confusing.)

There are a lot of red oak species out there that are sold as red oak. This blog entry can only deal with the two common ones.

Face grain of Northern red oak.

In general, most furniture makers prefer the Northern red oak. It grows slowly and has a finer grain. I find that it’s a little browner than other “red” oaks, so you don’t get as much of the pink cast that turns some people off.

You can usually identify the Northern red oak by looking at the end grain. The growth rings will be very tight – usually less than 1/16” apart (though there are exceptions I’ll discuss later). 

Southern red oak with its distinctive gray.

Southern red oak typically grows quickly. I’ve had pieces where the growth rings are 3/8” apart. The wood has a pinkish cast compared to the Northern stuff. Sometimes you will find gray stripes in the wood. Most people consider it the uglier of the two red oaks.

However, I prefer the Southern stuff for one simple reason: it’s usually stronger. 

Northern red oak (at top) can usually be identified by its color and its tight growth rings. Southern red oak (at bottom) is pinker and typically grows much faster.

The tight growth rings of the Northern red oak mean that there are a lot of pores running through each board. And these pores are filled with air. Chair parts made from Northern red oak are lightweight and can be quite fragile. I’ve had Northern red oak sticks and stretchers snap – even when the grain was dead straight. It’s simply a matter of too much air and not enough woody fibers.

The Southern red oak has fewer pores. The fibrous wood between the annular rings is heavy and springy. So thin sticks and stretchers are more likely to bend than snap.

As I’ve said many times before, however, trees are weird. Sometimes you get a Northern red oak that grew quickly and is strong. And other times you find a Southern red oak that grew slowly and produces some weak wood. 

And that’s why I remain open (but cautious) about both of the common commercial species of red oak. Choose your oak based on its color – you don’t want gray, pink and brown all clashing in one piece. And choose your oak based on what you want it to do: Buy fast-grown oak for strength; slow-grown oak for character.

— Christopher Schwarz

10x photo of Northern red oak.
10x photo of Southern red oak.

LAP Open Wire, Aug. 11, 2023 (We’re Back!)

Posted on by Lost Art Press
Megan applying soft wax to one of my elm comb-back chairs.

Sorry we took last weekend off. It was unavoidable.

We are here today and happy to answer your questions about woodworking, our books or Wilco songs.

This week’s open wire is hosted by me and Megan. Here’s how it works: Type your question in the comment field. Brevity is appreciated. We will attempt to answer it. It is that simple.

So here we go…. Note that comments for this entry will close about 5 p.m. Eastern.

Comments are closed for this Open Wire. See you next week.

— Christopher Schwarz

Rescuing Two ‘Lost Arts’ (Part 2)

Posted on by Lost Art Press

I grew up around handmade ladderback chairs that were made in the Arkansas Ozarks, but I didn’t think much about them until working as Owen Rein’s editor. Owen lives in Stone County, Arkansas, about three hours from where I grew up.

He was the first person to open my eyes to the simple beauty and mechanical sophistication of the post-and-rung chair.

Compared to Windsor chairs, there’s not much written about post-and-rung chairs. That should come as no surprise because Windsor chairs experienced an amazing renaissance starting in the late 20th century that is still going on today. Ladderback chairmaking, on the other hand, seems to be vanishing. It was a once-thriving craft in many mountain communities. But makers are dying out, and there aren’t as many young people taking up the tools.

And that’s why I’m thrilled to announce I am now editing Andrew Glenn’s book that shines a spotlight on the ladderback chairmakers who are left, and will instruct future generations on how to make these chairs.

“Backwoods Chairmakers” is a fascinating combination of a travelog, personality profiles and a practical shop manual. During the last few years, Andy has traveled all over Appalachia interviewing and documenting the techniques of post-and-rung chairmakers. They aren’t easy to find. Some of them live without electricity or phones.

Andy interviewed dozens of people for the book about the daily life of a chairmaker, which is a difficult way to make a living. Andy spent time in the woods with them. Observed them working. And tried to get a sense of why they chose chairmaking and the post-and-rung form.

The book concludes with two chapters where Andy shows you how to make a post-and-rung side chair and rocking chair using the traditional techniques explored in the book. These chapters, we hope, will inspire new makers to try making these ingenious chairs.

I’m in the middle of working on Andy’s book, and we hope to have it out by the end of 2023. It’s a fascinating read – even if you don’t care a whit about chairmaking. The people who populate “Backwoods Chairmakers” are astonishingly resilient, inventive (a tenon cutter made from a washing machine?) and thoughtful about their craft.

And unlike other authors who write about mountain folk, Andy approaches the topic with an unusual sensitivity. As someone who grew up in Arkansas and now lives in Kentucky, I’m familiar with the stereotypes (and don’t much appreciate them).

Oh, and did I mention the photography is gorgeous? Andy is great behind the lens. 

Definitely follow Andy on Instagram if you want to learn more about the book. He is regularly posting amazing photos and details from his travels.

— Christopher Schwarz