The paper is to be very plain, sufficiently brief, and is intended to lead to practical results; but whether such intention succeeds will, as usual, depend on the obedience and sympathy of those to whom it is addressed.
I was asked the other day to make a set of shelves to hold a few books, and while engaged in the work I determined to jot down a few notes upon those pitfalls which would beset an amateur not quite up to the mark who might undertake a similar job. To an onlooker nothing can be more simple and apparently easy than to cut out and put together a plain set of shelves, especially if they are to be nailed together; yet not a few make a terrible mess of it. (more…)
The last project for the “Campaign Furniture” book isn’t really a piece of campaign furniture. It’s a fairly close reproduction of a Kaare Klint “Safari Chair” in mostly black. Black leather, black-dyed mahogany and silver hardware. I left the strapping in its natural vegetable-tanned color for a little relief from the black.
Today I installed all the leather and strapping to the chair. Ty Black, my former shop assistant, was nice enough to stitch the arms and part of the back for me. Thanks Ty.
I included the chair in the book because the Safari Chair is one of the important links between the Victorians and modernism. It’s also a link between my book having typos and having fewer typos. I’m trading this chair for some editing on the book.
About 11 p.m. Christmas Eve, I wrote the final paragraph of “Campaign Furniture” and closed the laptop. Megan Fitzpatrick is editing the text now, and I’m finishing up some hand drawings, photography and scanning to complete the book.
I’ll start designing the pages on Jan. 1, and the finished product should ship to customers in March 2014.
I don’t know if I’m like other writers, but I have about zero point zero confidence about my books when they’re complete. My personal criticisms of my work are worse – way worse, actually – than anything spouted on the forums or lobbed into my inbox.
If I could stop myself from writing, I probably would. Unfortunately, writing and publishing is a compulsion, much like woodworking is a compulsion for me and many of my friends. So here is my pre-publication critique of my book: It’s too short, too shallow and not really funny.
1. Too short. This book clocks in at about 50,000 words. That’s about half the length of “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest.” I did everything I could to condense my thoughts and control my asides for “Campaign Furniture.” A lot of the information in “Campaign Furniture” is visual. There are hundreds of photos, drawings and scans of historical material.
My urge was to write an opus. I certainly have the material to do that. But I don’t have time to read an opus, and I know that many readers have lives that are as crazy busy as mine.
2. Too shallow. Here’s a confession: While I admire academic books and use them in my research, I do not enjoy reading them for fun. I am not an academic. I don’t write like one, I don’t think like one and I could never be one.
So while this book will have an index, a bibliography and some deep appendices, it is not going to impress a librarian or end up quoted in someone’s master’s thesis. The goal of “Campaign Furniture” is to introduce you to the style and – I hope – get you interested in building these pieces.
Campaign furniture, as you will see, is made with top-shelf joinery, beautiful woods and its only real adornment is brasses, which also reinforce the joinery. It is an under-appreciated style, and so much fun to build.
3. Not funny. I think good writing balances information and entertainment. But after writing several chapters in the same frame of mind as “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest,” I ended up rewriting them because the tone just seemed wrong. I find it weird to make jokes about the Napoleonic Wars, colonialism or severe urban overcrowding – all of which are part of the story of campaign furniture.
Some of the darkest and wrongest humor ended up on the cutting room floor. Here’s one bit that got cut. It’s too funny and sick and wrong not to share.
Attention, if you are easily offended, stop reading.
Sir Pratnap Singh, the Maharaja of Idar, was intent on wiping out the Muslim population of India. When an English official pointed out that they shared some Muslim friends, Pratnap replied: “Yes, I liking them too, but very much liking them dead.”
I know. It’s horrible on so many levels.
Despite my self-loathing, I do hope you’ll read the book and join me in researching and building in this fascinating style. I can already think of three more books about the campaign style that need to be written, and I hope this book sparks enough interest for me to continue my work.
During some annual inventory activity, John Hoffman and I turned up two cases of books we don’t sell anymore at Lost Art Press. These books aren’t doing anyone any good sitting in a warehouse, so we’re offering them at 50 percent off retail until they are gone.
We don’t have a lot of these, so they likely won’t be around for long. Here’s what we found:
“Workbenches: From Design & Theory to Construction & Use” (19 copies). This is my first book and covers the principles of bench design and construction that I still follow today. We stopped carrying this book because it’s suicide to compete with Amazon.com, and I’ve never been happy that F+W chose to print the title in China. We’re selling it for $15 plus domestic shipping. All the copies are signed.
First edition of “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” – the tan cover edition. The first edition has a few typos and doesn’t have an index. But you can download the index for free here. And at $17.50 plus domestic shipping, it’s a solid deal. These are signed via either bookplate or directly.
You can buy the first edition of “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” via this link.
The frequent inquiries in the Correspondence columns of Carpentry and Building indicate that there is a dearth of knowledge as to the proper method of sharpening a scraper. Without any disposition to assume superior knowledge in this connection I am constrained to remember that we cannot clean our floor without sharp tools, and will give your readers the benefit of my experience along this line.
I presume that every reader understands that the cutting edge of the scraper is formed by turning over a “burr” or wire edge, which does the cutting when applied to the wood. This burr is made by rubbing against the edge of the scraper with a tool called a burnisher, which may be made of any piece of steel of convenient form but which must be harder than the scraper. (more…)
