Earlier this week, I put up a chair for sale that I was proud of. Not my thing, pride. But the chair represents a small milestone in my work.
I didn’t expect many people to bid on the green Irish chair I’d built. It’s a painted chair. It’s not a comb-back chair. And it’s painted. But here’s the humiliating thing. No one has bid on it.
So here’s the thing. The rules of the sale are the same. Bid on this chair (or not) by 5 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 21. If the highest bid is $1, I will honor it. Here are the instructions for bidding.
Or maybe I shouldn’t build any more Irish armchairs in the future (no matter how comfortable they are).
Paul Murrett, working on a seven-stick stick chair during an early 2023 class.
Next Monday, Sept. 25, 2023, at 10 a.m. Eastern, bench spaces go on sale for January-June 2024 Covington Mechanicals classes at the Lost Art Press storefront. (And we’re excited to announce that both Roy Underhill and Matt Cianci we be once again make the trek to Kentucky to teach!)
We have only eight benches, so classes are – with rare exceptions – limited to six students (which leaves the not-teaching editors here at LAP one bench on which to work). Thanks in part to the small class size, most classes sell out in nanoseconds – for which we are grateful; thank you. But it does mean that it’s best to be ready to hit “register” the split second classes go live on the Covington Mechanicals Ticket Tailor page (and it helps to have a pinch of luck). If a class is sold out, I recommend registering for the waitlist; we end up filling a slot or two from the waitlists for almost every class.
Dovetailed Shaker Tray class, February 2018 (I wish my knees still bent like that, sans pain).
Upcoming classes are: • Build a Comb-back Stick Chair with Christopher Schwarz, Jan. 15-19, 2024 • Make a Dovetailed Shaker Tray with Megan Fitzpatrick, March 9-10, 2024 • Window Joinery with Roy Underhill, March 23-24, 2024 • Build & Engrave a Shepherd’s Coffer with Christopher Schwarz, April 5-7, 2024 • Build a Traditional Sawbench with Megan Fitzpatrick, April 20-21, 2024 • Saw Sharpening 101 with Matt Cianci, May 18-19, 2024 • Build & Engrave a Shepherd’s Coffer with Christopher Schwarz, June 7-9, 2024
Classes for the second half of 2024 will be posted in February.
Click here to go to our registration site. From there, you can click on each class for more details about it. NOTE: There will be a button on each class page that says “Register Now.” You can click that, but you won’t actually be able to register until 10 a.m. Eastern on Sept. 25.
Check out FAQs about classes here. If, after reading the FAQs you still have questions, please post a comment here, or email covingtonmechanicals@gmail.com. (These classes are independent of Lost Art Press/Crucible Tool, so please do not email the LAP help desk.)
– Fitz
p.s. There are still 2 spots available in my Shaker Tray class in beautiful Berea, Ky., Oct. 14-15, 2023. Come cut some dovetails with me; I promise to pay more attention to my students than to Woodsy, the new Pine Croft shop cat.(Or I at least promise to try.)
A set of try squares made by George Walker, co-author (with Jim Tolpin) of “Euclid’s Door” and other artisan geometry books. Leave a comment on this post, and you’ll be entered to win the set in a random drawing.
George Walker made the lovely set of walnut try squares shown above, following the step-by-step instructions in Chapter 4 of “Euclid’s Door.” (I don’t know if he had to refer back to his own writing or not…I know I sometimes do!) If you’re interested in adding them to your tool kit, leave a comment on this post by noon on Thursday, Sept. 21, 2023. I’ll pick a random winner from among all commenters that afternoon, and send them out as soon as I get the winner’s address. Below are the introductory paragraphs to the try squares chapter.
– Fitz
I spent my early years as a machinist in a bearing factory in Ohio. A string of red brick buildings that employed thousands of workers. Making bearings is all about precision and the heart of that was a department called the “Cold Room,” an island kept at 67°F and constant humidity behind a set of heavy double doors. The workers inside wore white shop coats and stood at benches with chrome-plated vises. They were the high priests who guarded that precision. Most of us regular shop rats avoided the cold room if we could. The factory was Africa hot in the summer and stepping in and out of the cold felt hellish. Reluctantly, I paid a visit one hot August afternoon. I’d just bought a precision engineer’s square and needed to get it certified. An engineer’s square has a steel fixed blade made to a high level of accuracy. A bored looking lab technician with tobacco-stained fingers took my square and placed it in a machine called an optical comparator – sort of an industrial microscope that projected the silhouette of my square onto a screen. He slid my square up against the side of a master square, a perfect steel cylinder with a mirror-like finish, and the comparator shined a light beam from behind to measure its accuracy. Any variation showed up as a sliver of light that the machine could magnify and measure.
That was years ago, but when I think about it now, a couple of things stand out. In a modern precision setting, we used essentially the same method to check for square that builders have used for thousands of years. Hold it up to a light and variation shows up glaringly. Secondly, the comparator exaggerated the error through some fancy optics to precisely measure variation from true. In this chapter we will go through the building of a set of wooden try squares and learn some geometric methods to create then test it. We can produce a tool that has an astounding level of precision.
We often get asked where one can buy apron hooks (both for our Workshop Waist Apron and other aprons), and we typically answer “French eBay” (which is where Chris got his). But artist/toolmaker/woodworker/metalsmith Eleanor Ingrid Rose has a new handful for sale on this side of the Atlantic, modeled on Chris’s with his permission, and they are gorgeous! Check out her Instagram post for more info.
Recently I finished up this green Irish armchair, and I’ve concluded it’s my best work yet. More than any other chair I’ve made, this chair gets closest to the intuitive style of chairmaking that I admire in Wales, Ireland and Scotland.
How did this happen? It was 20 years of practice plus two frantic days of building. I had to build this chair during a photo shoot over two short days. That meant I had to absolutely fly and build it with intuition and the wood on my bench.
As a result, the sticks are heavily faceted, the legs are thinner, the hands have proud tenons, the back sticks are a little longer than usual and the backrest is a different shape. All these decisions were made under duress and with almost no thought. Here is a short moviefilm I made to explain it.
Oh, it sits great, too.
Here are the details. The chair is made of red oak. All the joints are glued with hide glue so they can be easily repaired. The chair is painted with General Finishes Milk Paint in Basil with a thin coat of washed raw linseed oil (this gives it a little glow).
The seat is 16-1/4” off the floor. The overall chair is 33” high and 27” wide.
I am selling this chair via a silent auction.
Purchasing the Chair
If you wish to buy the chair, send an email to lapdrawing@lostartpress.com before 5 p.m. (Eastern) on Thursday, Sept. 21. Please use the subject line: “Irish Chair.” In the email please include your:
Bid
U.S. shipping address
Daytime phone number (this is for the trucking quote only)
The highest bid wins. If you are the “winner,” the chair can be picked up at our storefront for free. Or we can crate it and ship it to your door for a flat $250 in the lower 48. (I’m sorry but the chair cannot be shipped outside the U.S.)
Whew. Now I am a bit paralyzed with my next chair. So do I need to invent a fake crisis to get the same effect? Or will it be easy now that I have seen it come from my own hands?
