I don’t like these as much. They hang on the wall. I do like the miters, however.
— Christopher Schwarz
Campaign Furniture: When to Surrender
As I finished the text for “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” in 2011, I had a bad thought.
Shouldn’t I build multiple kinds of tool chests for the book? A traveling one? A Dutch example? A Japanese one? Some 20th-century suitcase types (which I am not fond of)?
In the end, I decided that no one was going to build the tool chest anyway. The chest was, after all, just a literary conceit. It was the mental place where you put your limited set of tools.
As the last two years and hundreds of tools chests have shown, I was wrong about one part of my rationalization. But what about the rest?
As I close in on the last bits of writing for “Campaign Furniture,” I am entering the “second guessing” phase of the project. Today I drew up some folding shelves that work using the same mechanism as the folding table I’ve built. As my pencil sketched in the hinges, I thought: I should build this. It’s just too cool.
These shelves fold flat after you pull out the center shelf, which is fit firmly into a groove/dado/rabbets in each side of the case. It is a crazy-cool use of 12 butt hinges.
So I’m trying to figure out if I have the time to build the shelves and still make my Dec. 31 deadline. I won’t extend the deadline. I can’t. But can I fit in this last piece?
— Christopher Schwarz
‘Doormaking and Window-Making’ Now in Store
As the Industrial Revolution mechanized the jobs of the joiner – building doors and windows by hand – one anonymous joiner watched the traditional skills disappear and decided to do something about it.
That joiner wrote two short illustrated booklets that explained how to build doors and windows by hand. And what was most unusual about the booklets is that they focused on the basics of construction, from layout to joinery to construction – for both doors and windows.
Plenty of books exist on building windows and doors, but most of them assume you have had a seven-year apprenticeship and don’t need to know the basic skills of the house joiner. Or the doors and windows these books describe are impossibly complex or ornamental.
“Doormaking and Window-Making” starts you off at the beginning, with simple tools and simple assemblies; then it moves you step-by-step into the more complex doors and windows.
Every step in the layout and construction process is shown with handmade line drawings and clear text. The booklets are written from a voice of authority – someone who has clearly done this for a long time.
During the last 100 years, most of these booklets disappeared. Soft-cover and stapled booklets don’t survive as well as books. And so we were thrilled when we were approached by joiner Richard Arnold in England, who presented us with a copy of each booklet to scan and reproduce for a book.
We have scanned both booklets, cleaned up the illustrations and have combined them into a 176-page book titled “Doormaking and Window-Making.” In addition to the complete text and illustrations from these booklets, we have also included an essay from Arnold on how these rare bits of workshop history came into his hands.
“Doormaking and Window-Making” is a hardbound book measuring 4-1/2” wide x 7-1/4” high. It is casebound, Smythe sewn and features acid-free paper. Like all Lost Art Press books, “Doormaking and Window-Making” is printed and bound entirely in the United States. The cost is $19, and the book is scheduled to ship from Lost Art Press before Christmas. If you order before Dec. 13, domestic shipping is free. After Dec. 13, shipping will be $7.
This title will be available to our small network of retailers in the United States and internationally. If they agree to carry the book, we will announce it here on the blog.
We are proud to be publishing this almost-lost bit of workshop practice. We hope it will inform and inspire you to make your own doors and windows for your shop and home.
— Christopher Schwarz
Of the Reglet, or the Notchy Stick (Unfiltered)
When I appear in public (always against my will), one of the nice things that people have to say is this: Boy you have an interesting job.
Not really. For the most part, my life is a lot of dead ends and “rabbet holes” (thank you Geo. Walker and Jim Tolpin). Here is a look at what a single blog entry looks like, from start to finish. Warning: This is messy, boring stuff.
And so Chris repaired to his workshop to make a notchy stick.
I have a bench
it tilts a bit.
I’m making a stick
to whack a wench.
Oh, hey diddle day….
— Suzanne “Saucy Indexer” Ellison
“When I first saw the Durer stick tonight, I thought – brilliant, they bored a hanging-hole at each end. I have 3’ steel ruler that hangs on the wall. More than half the time I go to hang it up, it’s the wrong way up. If there was a hole at each end, it would always be right. But maybe you’re right, and there’s some actual use, rather than just stupidity-prevention. The Rivius stick has only one hole – which shoots your nailing-it-as-a-fence theory. IF we can put all this stock in these engravings/woodcuts, etc. I think for arguments’ sake we accept what we see there. So one hole in the first, 2 in Durer. Hmm.”
— Peter Follansbee
“Check out the photo on page 29 of ‘The Workbench Book’ by Scott Landis. It shows Rob Tarule at his Roubo bench using a batten & holfast to stabilize a board when planed against the stop. It is the same thing as the Maguire video, without the notch. I’m not sure why the Internet reacted to much to the Maguire video. I suspect many of them have not read the Landis book, or forgotten that photo exists. I agree that the technique is cool, and would love to find supporting evidence that the technique is as old as a holdfast, but not so sure those Melencolia sticks are the “smoking gun.
“I’ve always tried to play it safe with the mystery stick in the images you have referenced, and just consider them straight edges. Most of the wooden drafting tools from those old images have a hang hole & one or more decorative cuts. Perhaps the fancy cuts are just to help identify the tool in the pile of junk, and prevent it from being used as kindling to heat the glew…”
— Jeff Burks
reglet, n.
Etymology: Middle French, French †reglet, †riglet small ruler (1370), carpenter’s rule (1530), (in printing) strip of wood used to create blank spaces between blocks of text (1635), (in architecture) narrow strip of moulding used to cover joins.
†b. A thin, flat piece or strip of wood used in carpentry or frame-making. Obs. rare.
1678 J. Moxon Mech. Exercises I. vi. Explan. Terms 112
Riglet, is a thin square peece of Wood: Thus the peeces that are intended to make the Frames for small Pictures, &c. before they are Molded are called Riglets.
1683 J. Moxon Mech. Exercises II. 25
On the..Fore-Rail..is nailed a small Riglet about half an Inch high, and a quarter and half quarter of an Inch thick.
1754 W. Emerson Princ. Mech. 307
Riglets, little flat thin, square pieces of wood.
1860 H. E. P. Spofford Sir Rohan’s Ghost xi. 223
It is not a small canvas, being about four feet in height,..and is set in a quaint frame of black, carved wood, with an inner reglet gilt to relieve the want of that color in the painting.
— OED
Officer’s Strong Trunk
Trunks such as this – sometimes called “strong chests” or “barracks chests” – are a common form of campaign furniture. They were available in a variety of configurations, from plain deal boxes to elaborate affairs lined with zinc, camphorwood or baize.
Trunks typically have square ends – both the height and depth of the trunk can be roughly 15” to 25” typically. In general, they are somewhere between 25” to 40” wide. The chests are frequently dovetailed at the corners and bound with brass corners and other brass straps. Despite the dovetails, many of the lids and bottoms of trunks were merely nailed to the carcase. It is not unusual to find a trunk with a lid or bottom that has a split.
Less expensive models used butt joints at the corner and were bound in iron with the lids simply screwed on.
My example is based off of details from five trunks I’ve studied in person, including one from the East Indies that had the unusual corner joint shown.
The mahogany is gorgeous stuff from Midwest Woodworking (RIP David Frank). The hardware was custom-made by Horton Brasses (thanks Orion Henderson and everyone at Horton). The finish is two coats of garnet shellac (Tiger Flakes from Tools for Working Wood), then one coat of dull lacquer and black bison wax from Liberon (aka Creepy Janitor).
I now have only two more projects to build for the book “Campaign Furniture,” a final Roorkhee chair that incorporates everything I’ve learned about them during the last year and a deluxe folding bookcase.
— Christopher Schwarz
