One of the books I’ve read in my research for “Campaign Furniture” is “Hints to Cadets, with a Few Observations on Military Service” by Lt. T. Postans (Wm. H. Allen Co., 1842). I thought the book might discuss the things that cadets should purchase, such as barracks furniture, for a tour in India.
I was wrong. He spends about a paragraph on that.
Most of the book is how to prepare you psychologically for the journey. How to be tolerant of other cultures and religions. How not to make an ass of yourself in India.
But one of the tools Postans thinks cadets should bring is a drawing pad and instruments, to record the landscape and the cadet’s surroundings in the quiet hours.
You can find it on GoogleBooks, though you might find it a cure for insomnia. I, however, found it a surprising book.
In an age when it was the fashion both at court and elsewhere for the higher families to keep a household fool for the amusement of their visitors and themselves, the Lord of Muncaster had a noted one, who, like many a better fellow, was apt to resent an insult when he thought it was carried too far.
During those days when each feudal lord held jurisdiction over his manors, evil deeds were done and punished or passed over at the will of the lord.
Tom was a favourite with his master, and one hot day he found the castle joiner in his workshop taking a nap after dinner, with his head resting on a block of wood for a pillow.
Calling to mind the many instances of the joiner having made more sport of him than was agreeable, he took an axe and chopped off the joiner’s head, hiding it among the shavings. He then capered into the hall in great glee, saying—” When the joiner wakes he will have some trouble to find his head.”
It is said of that far-off time, that a good joiner was easier to find than a good fool, and Tom’s exploit was overlooked.
William Dickinson
Cumbriana; Or, Fragments of Cumbrian Life – 1876
(Tom Skelton, aka Tom Fool, was a court jester of Muncaster Castle in the 16th century.)
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?
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.
