Narayan Nayar has revived his long-slumbering blog, etherfarm.com. Narayan is a frequent contributor to Lost Art Press products – he’s photographing the H.O. Studley chest, he created the chapter-opening photos for “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” and has helped me gain 10 pounds.
Narayan’s blog will surely cover woodworking, food and photography. So if you like any of those things, check it out.
Editor’s note: The below entry is part of a series of articles we have commissioned Brian Anderson to write about André Roubo in preparationd for the publication of “To Make as Perfectly as Possible: Roubo on Marquetry.” Brian, the translator for “Grandpa’s Workshop,” also wrote this entry on Roubo’s famous dome.
It must have been a popular topic for the local gossips – the apprentice joiner André Roubo begging, here and there, a cup of lard or tallow from the taverns and housewives in the Paris neighborhood.
A boy from a poor family begging a cup of lard for his mother to cook, would have been one thing. But the young André did not want it to cook with, but to fuel a simple oil lamp for light to study by. At the time, in the 1750s, it would have been rare enough for an ordinary worker to even know how to read. Spending money on learned books on geometry, mathematics, perspective and design and then plowing through them would have been a scandal in itself.
Roubo had been born in 1739 into a working class family. His father was a joiner, but according to the noted French architect, Louis-Auguste Boileau, who wrote a short biography of Roubo in 1834, the father was a worker of the crudest sort. The young man, apprenticed to his father at 12 or so, soon realized both that he loved the theory and practice of joinery, and that if he did not want to spend his life doing the lowest sorts of work for pennies a day, he would have to figure a way up and out himself.
Boileau wrote that he threw himself into his studies, going hungry sometimes to purchase his first books out of the pittance his father allowed him for his work. The young joiner attracted the notice of others with his enthusiasm, talent and thirst for learning as he worked for his father, eventually becoming a joiner in his own right.
But his big break came when a noted architect, Jean-Francois Blondel, took Roubo under his tutelage and gave him free tuition to his well-regarded school of architecture in Paris.
For five years, Roubo worked in his trade during the day; and then evenings, weekends, every free moment available, he spent pouring over the lessons Blondel set out for him. Mathematics, mechanics, perspective, design, different types of drawing. Plus, the building blocks of architecture, which also gave him enormous insight into his own trade.
Roubo proved as apt at these studies as he had at the practice of joinery, but Boileau notes that unlike some presented with a similar opportunity, Roubo apparently loved his craft. He loved to work wood, and was not tempted to move “up” into architecture.
Blondel was also a practicing architect, and a member of the French Academy of the Fine Arts, and his young protégé also proved adept at extending his circle of acquaintances from the people he met through the school and among the architect’s circles of friends and colleagues.
These connections would later prove invaluable, as Roubo’s thoughts turned from his studies to writing his own books.
I wear a shop apron almost every day, and so I’ve always wondered about “apron hooks,” which are shown in R.A. Salaman’s “Dictionary of Woodworking Tools.”
Here’s his entry on aprons that mentions these devices:
Carpenters and other woodworkers traditionally wear a white twill or canvas apron with a large pocket in front. It is fastened around the waist with long tapes tied in front, or with hooks that have decorative ends.
Yup. You read that right: Fancy stuff that is hooked above your buttocks. And yes, one of the hooks shown is a four-leaf clover, indicating you have a lucky butt.
I don’t think I want to know what the heart-shaped hook means.
But I am intrigued by the hooks because some days I can’t tie a bow behind my back.
Today I had a weird feeling. Not the kind in your pants – the kind in your head.
Because of a combination of odd events this afternoon, I ended up with about two hours of free time. No crushing deadline to meet. No frantic e-mails to answer.
So I designed the next chest for my book on campaign furniture. This one will be made using 40-year-old teak from Midwest Woodworking, which has been sitting in the corner of my shop for many months.
When I design a piece that won’t be painted, I begin by measuring all the pieces of lumber that I have picked out for the project. Unless I’m building an exact reproduction, I let the wood on hand provide the overall dimensions. If I have 17”-wide stock, I’m not going to draw a 20”-deep case.
Most of my teak is 18” wide. I have a 12’-long board and a 10’-long board. Plus three 50”-long boards and a shorter 13”-wide board for the drawers and thick chunks for the legs. These boards encouraged me to draw a chest that is 17” x 35” x 35” and that sits on 4”-tall turned feet.
How do I know that this will look good? I’ve spent the last two years (actually longer) collecting images and dimensions for campaign chests I like. I started looking at their overall sizes and sorting them into chests that were on the wide side and those that had a subtle vertical aspect to them.
This chest is going to be a little taller than it is wide. I pulled out images of about a dozen chests that are taller than they are wide and started sorting them into ones that had drawer arrangements I liked and those that were forgettable.
Then I fired up SketchUp.
When I draw things in SketchUp to build them, I draw only the things I don’t know. I don’t draw the joinery if it’s stuff I know how to make. I don’t draw drawer sides and bottoms and internal guides, runners and kicks. I know how to make all that stuff – drawing it will only slow me down.
If there’s wacky compound joinery, I’ll draw that. But that’s pretty uncommon.
When I work in SketchUp, the major question I want answered is this: Will this project look like something that will avoid the burn pile for the next 200 years? This is SketchUp’s superpower. You can draw a chunk of something and look at it from an infinite number of perspectives. You can put it in a room, by a loom or on the moon.
So I drew a bunch of 17” x 18” x 35” boxes and sketched drawer fronts on them. I drew a bunch of feet. Then I put the boxes together and looked at them from a bunch of perspectives. For a project like this, the entire sketching process took about an hour.
Before I quit SketchUp and fetched a beer (Bell’s Hopslam), I made a cutting list for the major parts and took that down to the shop and confirmed that the lumber on hand will support the design on screen.
And finally, with chalk in hand, I’ll start sketching my cutting lines on the rough stock.
— Christopher Schwarz
P.S. What about the stuff I draw for magazine articles? That is a totally different process. That’s when I draw everything the reader doesn’t know. So I draw every part, every joint, every assembly. But I do that after the project is complete.
After writing about the parallel-tip screwdrivers from Grace USA and Lee Valley, I received lots of suggestions about other makers I should check out.
However, in my wanderings through the netherworlds of screwing and unscrewing, I stumbled upon this English-made driver on my own. After getting my hands on it, I can say it’s like the makers were reading my mind. It’s called the Elemen’tary No. 1 Screwdriver, and here is why it makes most screwdrivers look as intoxicating as a Shirley Temple.
1. It has a wooden handle that is turned in the shape of a vintage turnscrew. So it won’t roll off your bench thanks to the flats. And it fits my hand like a baseball glove.
2. The finish on the beech handle is oil. It’s tactile, like the finish on the Grace drivers. Not slippery like a plastic screwdriver.
3. The screwdriver chuck has an O-ring that grips your standard bits, even snapping them in place. Many of these bits have a small groove that receive the O-ring. That’s nice. However….
4. The Elemen’tary driver also has a screw chuck that locks the bits in better than any other magnet or O-ring. This small knurled knob allows you to secure your bit so it won’t pull out of the tool. If you own any four-way screwdriver, you know how this is one of their major downsides.
The Elemen’tary driver includes six bits, though it will use almost any standard bit. This driver is going on the road with me this year and will replace five screwdrivers I carry to adjust tools and drive slot-head and Phillips screws.
While the bits that come with this driver are good, I upgraded mine by substituting ground gunsmith bits from Brownell’s. More on that in a future post.
I have only one quibble with this tool. (Don’t I always have quibbles?) Like all drivers, I think this one doesn’t need to be so long. This driver could easily lose 1” or 1-1/2” and be ideal. With woodworking, we almost never say: This screwdriver is too short. Usually the lament is: This driver is too long to get inside the cabinet.
Yes, I know that there is a stubby version of this tool.
You can purchase this tool from several sources. I bought mine from Hand-Eye Supply for $35.